


Pro Tempore

by wildirerose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, First Time, Frottage, Implied Relationships, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Oral Sex, Requited Love, Unrequited Love, romantic sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 09:49:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildirerose/pseuds/wildirerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1901. It starts, or always was, or ends. Castiel stole a hundred years just to have them- to give Dean time- to fix everything he broke, but theirs was always the space between duration. Struggling towards something bigger, Dean braces himself for the worst- he can't see the silver lining, but Sam can. Determined to make the best of a bad situation Sam, Meg, and a predestined sense of duty are already rethreading the universe Castiel unravelled. Integral players never get a choice; Castiel loves Dean, Dean might love him back, but what heroes are built best for is always the perfect goodbye. <b>Canon!Verse AU. S7/S8. Canon Compliant ending.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Pro Tempore

**Author's Note:**

> **wildirerose:** Writing this fic has been quite an experience. For the my first time co-writing with anyone, I couldn't have asked for a better partner in crime than Hailey ([buttsexandwaffles](%E2%80%9Dbuttsexandwaffles.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D)). She was patient with my (several) life crises, creative, fun, and gorgeous, and encouraged me to do my very best. And she even shared her fabulous beta - Lydia, thank you so much for all your insightful comments and for staying up all night to help us make our deadline. You're a treasure; I'm making Hailey clone you. And thanks to Neyllya, too, for the absolutely beautiful art. It's been a long time in the making, but I am excited and proud to send this fic out into the world! (FINALLY!)  
>  **buttsexandwaffles:** Well, that’s it. We’re fucking done. This was such an incredibly crazy experience. There were many milestones but we pulled it together in the last legs of the race and I’m not touching myself when I say, it turned out fabulously. Special thanks to Lydia who was not only the rock-constant in my freak-outs, but the best Beta we could ask for. You made this story. Without you, it would be half of what it is now, To our fabulous artist [Neyllya](http://Neyllya.tumblr.com): You rock babes! It was beautiful work! Also, BIG thanks to Megs for being a great co-writer and forever tolerant of my persnickity assholeness. But, and as fondly as I can muster, it’s *Cas’* you sexlicious buttmunch!

  
  


================================================  
 _At the end of the world if I should be so blessed,  
I would choose the monster, the method, the soldier and this._

**Part I**

================================================

  
    A cabin in the woods, a broken angel, a demon, two brothers and no plan.  
    There are a hundred different kinds of anger, and Dean Winchester was going through all of them. The subtle creep of fury, the surface calm of near explosion, the lamenting acceptance of being so tired of dealing with everything it felt white. Another hot mess with his name written all over it, but he wasn’t a superhero, wasn’t anything but bone-deep done. Sam was telling him something important, probably integral, and he wasn’t really paying attention. Instead, he was watching the back of Cas's head and wishing he could hit something. In the corner, Meg smirked and he knew why she did. The tune was still the same, afterall. Castiel was a few feathers short of functional and he was asking rhetoricals just because.  
    “Hey, shifty, what’s your problem?”  
    “Do we need a cat?” Castiel turned, “Doesn’t this place feel one species short?”  
    Something was wheedling in the back of his head.  
    Something he couldn’t touch, but it was there.  
    Memories, maybe.  
    Fragments.  
    “You got anything to say on the topics of Dicks?” Of course he wouldn’t and really, Dean didn’t even know why he asked. “Crowley was pretty sure that you could help-”  
    “I can’t help!” Castiel snapped. He couldn’t help, shouldn’t! “You understand? I destroyed... everything, and I will destroy everything again.” Again and forever but always to the moment; it had already played out, infinitesimally, regrettably. That was the problem with angels, there was no way to forget. “Can we please just leave it at that?”  
    “No.” Dean pushed off from the coffee table, “No, we can’t.”  
    “Dean-” Sam warned.  
    “We can’t leave it.” God, everything was so fucking broken and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to fix it; couldn’t fix Castiel, couldn’t fix himself. Everything was going to hell and he was just watching it happen. “You let these friggin’ things in, so you don’t get to make a sandwich. You don’t get a damned cat! Nobody care that you’re broken, Cas! Clean up your mess!”  
    “You know...”  
    It was just the crackle of an idea, but so suddenly clear. Castiel looked at Dean and the future unfolded around him. Of course they should stand their ground, fight because good tin soldiers would, but to what end? There was something propelling him forward, pushing him back. Dinner and dishes and sweat between the sheets, born under a bad sign and in the wrong reality. None of it was right! Nothing was right about living just to die in the end. He didn’t want to fight because every time he did, what broke in the end was always Dean.  
    And like an echo, he heard himself say: “We should play twister.”

 

================================================

  
    There was an undercurrent of hysteria buried under the calm, always running parallel. He wasn’t crazy, even if he was. Complicated, yes, but how could they still not understand? He wasn’t the broken thing. The broken things littered the ground behind him, they scattered like his feathers to the earth... Time, yes, they needed time! Castiel could feel the pulse of it at the edges of his grace. A million little quivering threads, shining. He stroked them, considered. It was hard to focus. He could hear the sharp crack of a brother’s voice, far away: _Never, Castiel, never ever pull them like that._. But then, that brother was dead.  
     _Why not, why wasn’t he supposed to?_ And it was just like a game, to pluck one thread and then the next. _Yes_ , he thought, _let’s play Twister_. Castiel twisted and tugged and twined the fabric of the universe; he wrapped it around himself and what family he had left. The pulsebeat swelled, cold panic stuck in his throat and buzzed across his skin like a thousand hideous insects. He couldn’t distinguish the alarm bells from one another, one warned him to fly, to escape, to hide, while another begged him to stop, to release the threads he held in his bloodstained hands.  
    He knew that if he hesitated long enough something or someone would stop him. He couldn’t- wouldn’t- he had to keep them safe! He felt the three of them in their essential natures, captured them with the quivering strands of time. Dean and Sam were oblivious to the coils he twined around their souls, but Meg thrashed in his grip. He could feel her try to fight him. _No_ , he thought. _Please. I won’t let anyone hurt you!_ But, she wouldn’t stop and everything was suddenly tangled. Castiel had to move, move now, or the threads would snap and fray.  
    He didn’t have time to think of a place; he reached inside on instinct. Back, back before all the long nightmares began. Somewhere quiet; somewhere safe. He expended energy in waves, vomited light, hollered into the void. He’d almost lost them! Meg was breaking away and he tried to hold on, to tell her not to let go, that he needed her still, but she plummeted to the earth a few feet or months away, and all he could do was hold onto Sam and Dean as tightly as he could.  
    When it was over, they were inside and everything was quiet. They were at rest, peace. As Castiel lost consciousness, he heard a hammer against his skull. A long-dead brother clucked his tongue, disappointed. _Castiel, Castiel… What a mess you’ve made._

 

================================================

Mental Hospital, Indiana.

 

  
    Meg knew it was stupid, the way she was so sentimentally attached. A nagging voice inside her head said: buck up, Meg baby- it’s just a business transaction, tit for tat. Feet kicked up on the edge of Castiel’s hospital bed she watched him sleep, Clarence on his wristband because she could. So maybe it was just business and he was just collateral, too-long lashes and stubble. Still, carefully and every Thursday she bathed him, read magazines by lamplight and wondered what would happen when he woke up. Stupid, but she remembered the palpable tension, the tenacity, and now? Helpless. Just a puppy dog, no bark, no bite and maybe she missed the taste of the power-struggle.  
    Either or, it looked like another long night, just a quiet companion and a copy of Cosmo. Somewhere outside there was a screech of tires and the pick-up of a storm. Sighing, Meg leaned back in her chair and then-  
     _DON’T LET GO!_  
    The sound was blinding, worse than sonic split of the universe, louder. Trapped in the eyelet of a tornado she could feel a hand, see everything, nothing. Entire histories spindling out and around them like spiderthreads and Castiel, his face! Blue-eyes and white light, horse head, lion, hammerstrike, wing beat and he was coming apart at the seams. Not built to bend like that, not made to force them through and to the other side!  
    It was a glass shattering wail, a lie, a cosmoscentic self-implosion.  
    “Let me go!”  
    “Hold on!”  
     _You can’t take us all!_  
     _No!_  
     _NO!_  
    And Meg could feel the slip as her fingers slid over his, slammed back into gravity at the forcespeed of light. From weightless etherea to sudden existence and she was on her knees, hospital melting back into focus, spitting blood on the tile. Hospital- why was she- no, yes and there he was. Castiel, still laying motionless in his bed. What had he tried to do or more importantly, when? Wherever he had meant to drag her, she had slipped through a crack in time and back inside herself, self-aware but earlier. There were rules to parallel existence and if he’d pulled her far enough, she would have snapped out of her own sync and become a separate entity, deviate from her her own timeline and subcrossed it on some shakily unsound otherside.  
    Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and still shaking, Meg dragged herself upright and leaned into the wall. Then, there was a sudden but polite knock at the door.  
    Meg swung around, “What?”  
    “Meg Masters?”  
    “Depends on who’s asking.”  
    “Postman, ma'am… They let me in a front desk and, uh, well... This is going to seem kinda of crazy, but, there’s been this letter in the office since…”

 

================================================

  
    It was dark, seriously fucking dark, and Dean was reacting on instinct. He dropped to one knee and ran through the weapons he had access to. His gun was on the table, which should have been three feet to his right. He dragged his knife from its ankle sheath and shuffled across the floor, staying low. He could hear Sam through the dark, hear a low moan that can only be Castiel. Whatever cut the lights? It could be anywhere.  
    By the time he’d circled around a six foot radius, Dean had to accept that nothing was where it should be. When he circled out to seven he crashed into something, a table, but not the right height, and sent whatever was on it scattering to the floor. He cursed, loudly, because if there was anything out there it would be easier to let it come find him. There was no response but silence; even Castiel’s pained moaning had stopped.  
    “Sammy? You okay?” Dean asked.  
    “Yeah,” Sam said. “Hey, do you have your lighter?”  
    Dean listened for a tense moment. He couldn’t hear anything moving. Maybe they were alone. Maybe whatever killed the lights couldn’t get past their wards. But then, why wasn’t anything where it was supposed to be? Fumbling in his back pocket, Dean pulled out his lighter and flicked it.  
    “What the hell…?”  
    They were in some kind of windowless room, spartan and small. What he’d knocked over was an inkwell and the black ink was soaking into the woodgrain of the table. Papers had scattered to the floor, maps as far as he could tell in the brief flicker, and two unornamented chairs sat squared on either side. The wall was a blank expanse beyond and thumb slipping, Dean’s lighter went out and they were plunged into darkness again.  
    “I think I saw a lantern,” Sam said. “Hold on.”  
    Dean listened to his brother shuffling in the dark. There was a faint clanking sound, then he felt Sam pressed up against his side.  
    “Here, hand me that,” Sam said.  
    Dean passed Sam his lighter and suddenly the lantern flared to life casting shadows on the walls. Blinking through the glow, Dean realized why nothing was where it’s supposed to be- because they weren’t where they were supposed to be! Wherever they’d been dragged by whatever unknown force, it sure as hell wasn’t Kansas anymore. Survivalist, judging by the maps and the stockpile of canned goods. Huge but dark, reinforced bunker maybe? Gun locker, there was a plus. Nothing electronic that he could see in the lamplight, high ceilings, poured concrete. Whoever or whatever didn’t really matter, they didn’t have time to waste finding out. Castiel was just going to burn batteries trying to get- wait, where was Cas?  
    Dean scanned the room and then his heart sank. He was spread out on the floor, head half-propped against the wall at a sickening angle. Dean moved to his side as quickly as he could. _Holy shit, Cas!_ What he’d said before they left the cabin was that no one cared and if that was the last thing he ever- but no, Cas was breathing. He was unconscious but breathing. Dean lay a hand against his throat, felt Cas's pulse under his fingertips and let out a relieved breath.  
    “Is he-?” Sam asked.  
    “Yeah, no.” Dean took a deep breath. “He’s okay; he’s breathing. Where the heck are we?”  
    “Underground, as far as I can tell,” Sam said. “There’s no windows.”  
    The next few hours proceeded in painstaking, tentative exploration. Sam held the lantern high as they rounded each corner, Dean kept his knife naked in his hand. They found neatly ordered stacks of rations in undecorated rooms with minimal furniture and by the time they had made the full circuit, it was clear they were alone.  
    “I don’t get how Dick pulled this one,” Dean said. “Some kind of curse? Spell? You didn’t touch anything weird, did you?”  
    “I don’t know, Dean,” Sam said. “When Cas wakes up-”  
    “Yeah, like he’s gonna be much help,” Dean sighed. “He’s probably just gonna search the place for board games or bees or something.”  
    Sam looked at him, hesitated.  
    “Dean, you don’t think…?”  
    Sam gestured weakly at the unconscious angel laying prone on the floor.  
    “Oh, hell no. Do you think Cas did this?”  
    “He was upset. We got teleported somewhere, and he’s out like a light. I mean, it does seem like maybe-”  
    Sam let the sentence trail off as Dean slumped against the wall, arms folded across his chest. He let out a long, tired breath.  
    “Goddamn angels,” he said.  
    How could Cas do something like this again, without any regard for the consequences? There was a battle to be fought, and now Dean was stuck god knows where and for all he knew, they were on another continent. They were going to have to try to rush back to get to Dick in time, were probably going to have to take a goddamn _plane_. It was bullshit, and honestly, he just wished Cas would wake up.  
    “Dean...” Sam started.  
    Dean shook his head, jaw still clenched, but he stepped away from the wall.  
    “Look, I think the exit is this way. Let’s check it out.”  
    Sam nodded and they headed back down the hall. They climbed the stairs and forced open the heavy metal door. Daylight streamed in. Dean squinted, shielded his eyes with his hand. All he could see were trees, everywhere. They were in the middle of a forest.  
    “We should try to find high ground,” Dean said, stepping out into the glare of sunlight. He could feel the slow build of his anger, multiplied by the trees and the sunshine and the absolute lack of recognizable landmarks.  
    “We can’t leave Cas!”  
    “Seriously?”  
    Already, Sam was staring at Dean like he’d just said something unbelievably cruel. _What, like stranding us in the middle of nowhere wasn’t a dick move?_ Dean thought. Nevertheless, he followed Sam back inside.

 

================================================

  
    Further exploration of their surroundings revealed four beds in two bedrooms- cots, really. They were the only pieces of furniture in those rooms, and Sam had to dig through two closets to find sheets, but there was plenty of room for Cas's still-unconscious body. After dragging three of the cots into what they assumed was the main hall, Sam and Dean heaved Castiel onto the one of them. After, Sam pulled off Cas's shoes, shoved a pillow under his head, and tucked a blanket up around his chest while Dean nursed his growing frustration.  
    “He doesn’t get cold, Sammy,” He said.  
    Sam ignored him and, fidgeting, Dean circled from room to room to reassure himself they were still empty. When he eventually made it back around to where Cas was, Dean felt a punch of guilt in his gut at the sight of Sam slumped against the wall beside the cot, looking worried. Castiel looked bad, too pale, sprawled out with the flicker of lamplight playing over his face. It was hard to tell if he was breathing from a distance. Dean looked at the floor, instead.  
    “Look, how about while you play nursemaid I go see about getting us out of here?”  
    Sam shrugged. _Fine_ , Dean thought. Be pissed.  
    Besides the obvious problem, the most entertaining thing they’d found so far was a deck of cards. Not so much as a TV, radio, nothing. Whatever backcountry militia whackjobs had stocked the place had left out a few key details, and as soon Dean figured out what town they’d been zapped into he was carting Cas to a motel with free Wi-Fi if he had to carry him the whole way. Slamming the door behind him, Dean left with no intention of coming back until he found out where they were, and more importantly, how not to be there.

 

================================================

  
    Edging around the property Dean couldn’t find anything that would tip him off as to where they were. Best course would be to wait until after nightfall and check for lights, a glow on the horizon meant a city but it didn’t seem like there was anything nearby. Also, they didn’t have the lay of the land so if they were in a valley, lights’d mean jack. Hesitating, he knew twilight was coming on fast and with almost everything and everyone wanting them dead, Dean only walked a short while down the dirt road nearest the house before turning back. Cursing the entire situation, he watched the stars come out from the back steps until he was sure Sam was probably sleeping and then quietly, he snuck back inside.  
    Sam wasn’t sleeping, of course. He heard the door, then Dean, but didn’t move, kept his breathing steady. If there was anything he learned in thirty-odd years of rooming together, it was how to avoid confrontation. Half the times Dean had stormed out only to slink back in the middle of the night he hadn’t been sleeping, but it was easier that way.  
    “Sammy...?” Dean asked, and waited.  
    No answer. Yeah, Sam was out like a light and snuffling softly, so Dean padded his way to Castiel’s cot by the light of his watch. For a minute, he stood stalk-still before shuffling closer, checking to make sure he was still okay. Everything he’d said in the cabin, to Sam an hour earlier, he’d just been so frustrated with the situation and he should have known better. Castiel was off-kilter to start with and if he’d just kept his cool they wouldn’t be stuck in the middle of nowhere without a plan. No, they’d be back and losing a fight they’d never had a chance to win in the first place. And what if by the time they got back, it was too late? The three of them, did they just go organic- live off the land, try and keep a low profile, survive?  
    Honestly, he didn’t care, couldn’t give a fuck, just wanted it all to be over. Staring at Castiel’s edged profile Dean wasn’t sure if he was more angry than worried or not, but motionless in bed Cas looked so… Well, so human.  
    “Hey, Cas... I know you probably can’t hear me, but, uh... Not sure where you took us vacationing but yeah, wakie wakie.” Dean felt stupid but for some reason, he kept talking. “Listen man, I’m just- I’m sorry, okay? I get that you’re a little stressed out by everything that’s- well, everything, but when we get back we’re gonna get you up and running a hundred and ten. And hey, after we clean out the cobwebs we’ll take a nice long vacation- somewhere warm, get you all hooked up with some killer sunblock because seriously?”  
    A few feet away Sam tried not to listen.  
    “We made some mistakes. Okay, yours were like cosmic size mistakes but c’mon, man, don’t give up the goat. We’ll get you patched up, zap home, fight some Dick. It’ll be good times.” Dean wanted to laugh but it wasn’t actually funny, just a complicated kind of sad.  
    All at once he missed a hundred things: little idiosyncrasies, deadpan comebacks, blunt and tactless dealings with the everyday mundane. He missed Cas, of course he did, and what was most confusing was how much he missed him, in what way and why. A sense of self-preservation kept the lid tight on that can of worms, but a strangling sense of vulnerability came down around him when he reached out a hand and rested on top of Cas's.  
    “Gonna get you back to normal, okay? We just need time.” For a while after that, Dean didn’t say anything but he didn’t move, either.  
    When he finally did roll into bed in the cot opposite, Sam was still awake and staring the ceiling. There was something about the way Dean and Cas fell into a pattern of mutual gravity that made him wonder. Dean didn’t keep friends, didn’t keep women, didn’t keep anything or anybody around for long. Still, Castiel was the time-and-again exception and it didn’t seem to have anything to do with what he was or how useful, because honestly? Cas caused more problems than he solved.  
    It was complicated because Dean would never say anything, but Sam was starting to think there was more to the story. Maybe he was reading the whole thing wrong, but then again, Sam knew Dean better than anybody on the planet and if he had to put a finger on the crux and cause… Well, he was at a loss.

 

================================================

Four Days Later

 

    There were whispers swirling in the dark, muffled by a memory feathers and wind. He had been very, very bad and they would call him forth. Punish him. Castiel shuddered. There was a hand touching him and it was real. It was real, but it wasn’t hers. That was confusing. It had been hers for so long now...  
    He remembered things, sensations. A sponge, warm and wet under the miasma of grief and guilt, flickering lights. There were two people in the room now. There were two, so where was she? Sam and Dean were safe. Where was Meg?  
    It was important that he asked, used his tongue. Dry, it swelled between his teeth. How, again? He knew. He opened his eyes, shuddered. Castiel heard voices, and they were real. Not his brothers’ but the other brother’s. Concern dripped into his ears. A hand like an anvil pressing, pressing him down... He had to speak! His throat pushed the words out, air and teeth and tongue; that was how you asked about her.  
    “Meg,” he said. “Where-?”  
    Conversation was harder than he remembered. His vocal cords were tired, stagnant. How long since he’d spoken with his vessel’s instrument? Minutes made into years, longer. The blackness still pricked at his mind, tugging, cajoling. He could not fall into it again. They were shouting his name!  
    “Dean-!” he gasped, and the light crashed in.

 

================================================

  
    “Dean!”  
    There was urgency in Sam’s voice. Dean stopped his fourth catalog of available weapons, reordering the knives and checking if any still needed sharpening. Old habits die hard. He grabbed one off the table before entering the bedroom where they’d left Cas.  
    “What, Sammy? Seen another rat?”  
    “It’s Cas,” Sam said. “I think he’s waking up.”  
    Sure enough, Cas was shifting on the cot. His fingers curled and uncurled, he turned his head to the side. Dean stepped immediately to his side. Cas hadn’t moved once since they’d arrived.Placing his hand on the Cas's forehead, he checked instinctively for fever but Cas's skin felt cool under his palm. What Dean didn’t know was that Castiel had the perfect memory of every angel in creation and when the devil whispered, he spoke their mother tongue.  
    “Cas?” Sam asked. “Hey, hey it’s okay.”  
    Cas's eyelids fluttered open, unfocused gaze directed at the ceiling. Dean didn’t let himself feel relieved yet. Cas hadn’t been a hundred percent before they’d flown the coop and still there was something vacant behind those blue eyes.  
    “You in there, buddy?” Dean said.  
    Sam shot him a worried glance. Cas's lips moved soundlessly, body twisted in the sheets. Icy dread settled in Dean’s gut. What if Cas was worse, now? What if he-  
    “Meg,” Cas said.  
     _Oh, fuck him!_ Dean mentally spat. They’d tiptoed around underground for almost a week, fussing over his unconscious ass, and he asks for that demon bitch as soon as he wakes up. Sam breathed out slowly- probably relieved, and realizing his hand was still on Cas's forehead, Dean shot it back and crossed his arms.  
    “Not Meg,” Dean said.  
    “Where-”  
    Threads, tangling and untangled, tendrils, whips! His eyelids slid shut and in the black-blink he could see the past, the future, the places in between. The back of his head pressed into the pillow, the tendons in his neck strained forward.  
    Sam looked pale.  
    “Whoah, hey,” Dean reached forward to steady him by the shoulder, but as quickly as the fit started it seemed to pass. Cas's muscles relaxed; he exhaled.  
    “Dean…?”.  
    Eye blinking open, Castiel was calm. He focused on the two of them, and as Dean let go of his shoulder, Sam stepped away from the bed. No one seemed to know what to say.  
    “Man, uh, are you okay?” Sam asked.  
    “I’m fine, Sam,” Cas said, but Dean felt nauseous. It was the same detached voice Cas had been using since they left him in the hospital. Dean looked at him, eye contact, impassive. “Good,” Dean lied. “So, how about you mojo us out of here then?”  
    “Dean,” Sam sounded annoyed.  
    “What? You’re the one that figured he got us into this mess. Least he can do is get us out of it. For all we know, Dick’s already eaten half the damn planet.”  
    “You don’t need to worry about that anymore, Dean,” Cas said earnestly as he sat up, back straight and legs outstretched. There were dark circles under his eyes, but otherwise he looked okay. Dean began to pace, he was worried and worse, pissed.  
    “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said. “This isn’t some kind of joke, okay? Take us back. Now!”  
    Cas smiled, and it was like a bucket of ice water over Dean’s soul. That smile, that wasn’t Cas. That was whatever thing had crawled inside of him out of Sam’s skull and left him broken and sad and completely unreachable. Cas smiled, and Dean hated him. Cas smiled, and Dean hated himself. Business as usual.  
    ”I don’t have enough grace remaining to reverse the journey.”  
    “So, what, we’re stuck here while your batteries recharge?”  
    Cas gave an eloquent shrug of one shoulder, which seemed to be the only answer Dean was going to get.  
    “Well, that’s just perfect.”.  
    Castiel swung his legs over the side of the cot and stood up. He was surprisingly steady on his feet for having been comatose for days. Sam reached out to support his elbow, letting it go when he realized Cas was all right on his own. Walking out of the room, Cas was halfway up the stairs by the time Dean caught up with him, grabbed his coat and tugged him back. He might not be Cas's biggest fan at the moment but he wasn’t about to let an unstable, powerless angel wander around the woods unsupervised. Regarding him with a bland expression, Castiel’s gaze moved placidly between the hand fisted in his sleeve and Dean’s face.  
    “Whoah,” Dean said. “Where are you running off to?”  
    “I have to mail a letter,” he said, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.

 

================================================

  
    “You need to what?!” Dean couldn’t believe what he was hearing,     “Yeah, don’t know if you missed the memo so far, but we’re in the middle bumfuck, nowhere, and you need to mail a letter?”  
    “It stands to reason- of course!” Castiel was mumbling under his breath. “If she let go then, fourth string, time is only relevant so long as...”  
    “Cas, focus!”  
    “So if I mail it for later now, she’ll come back in-”  
    “CAS!”  
    Sam winced from behind them, he wished Dean didn’t yell but Cas didn’t seem fazed. Instead he straightened his coat and added, “We should leave immediately.”  
    “Uh, there’s not really anywhere for us to go.” Sam cleared his throat, interrupting the palpable tension. “It’s woods all around here. I mean, there’s a dirt road but Dean followed in for a half hour or so, but no end.”  
    “Of course there’s an end.” Castiel frowned, it was all so simple! “All roads lead to somewhere and of course, we are somewhere so it stands to reason that if we follow somewhere in reverse, we will end up in the place everyone started from.”  
    Looking helplessly at Dean, Sam could see the way his knuckles tightened. They didn’t know where they were, they didn’t know how they were going to get back and the last thing they could afford was Dean losing his temper and Castiel leaving them stranded.  
    “Tomorrow.”  
    “What?” Dean’s head snapped ‘round.  
    “It’s getting dark, we’re all- we’re hungry, and since Cas can’t tell u- don’t remember where we are right now, we should play it safe.”  
    “Sam...”  
    “Dean, just- tomorrow?” There was a flicker of a look between them and Sam added, “We’ll figure it all out in the morning, okay?”  
    “Fine.”  
    “Cas, that works for you?”  
    “I would prefer if-” Cas seemed suddenly aware of Dean’s pinched expression and hesitated before nodding. Time was circumlinear, a day wouldn’t matter. It upset him to leave Meg behind but of course, he wasn’t really leaving her at all. Still, it was a weight on his conscience.  
    “Okay,” Sam seemed to relax. “I guess, uh, that’s that.”  
    “Great. Just, awesome. Sam, can I have a word with you?” Dean was massaging his temple, headache blooming behind his eyes. “Over here, please.”  
    “Yeah.”  
    Dean waited until they were out of earshot before whirling around, “Have you lost your goddamn mind? We’re not taking a fieldtrip to look for a friggin’ post office! We’re getting out of here.”  
    “Dean-”  
    “No, don’t ‘Dean’ me!” He hissed. “The entire planet is about to go all-you-can-eat Dick and we’re stuck here- wherever here is- waiting for it all to go down without us!”  
    “I know that! But if he takes off, what then?”  
    “If you think I’m gonna just-”  
    “Will you just stop for five seconds?” Sam got it, he did, but Castiel wasn’t in any condition and pushing too hard was only going to make things worse. “We’ll figure this out, just, calm down. You check through whatever we’ve still got canned. We’ll eat, we’ll try and sleep and then I don’t know, go from there.”  
    “And him?” Dean thumbed over his shoulder at Castiel, staring absently at the wall.  
    “I don’t know.” Sam admitted.  
    “Whatever, fine.”  
    “Dean...”  
    “I said fine, Sam.” Dean was too tired to argue, “End of conversation, all she wrote. What do you want to eat, I saw beans back there, soup, fish?”  
    “Whatever works, it doesn’t matter.”  
    “Is he eating?” Sam turned, “Cas, are you eating?”  
    “Should I?”  
    “Just bring enough for three, just in case.”  
    Dean just shrugged, already picking his way to the shelving at the back of the bunker. Sam felt impossibly stretched, but they’d gotten themselves out of worse. It was just like Dean to bottle or blow up, and that wasn’t going to help them. Keeping a level head, that would help. Cas was… Well, fundamentally still Cas, and he would be able to get them home if they were patient and didn’t back him into a corner.  
    Briskly and ignoring Sam, Dean slammed two cans down on the table and pulled a third from his pocket.  
    “We’ve got pork and beans and beets, stove’ll take a bit to heat up.”  
    “Guess bunker guy was really set up for end of days, huh? I’ll never get over no electrics.”  
    Dean just grunted and Sam sighed. It was going to be like that, then. The truth was, Dean just needed to be mad at somebody and a part of him felt intensely guilty for being mad at Castiel. Sam, on the other hand, had pressed all the right buttons at all the wrong times.  
    “Hey, spaceketeer.” Dean snapped his fingers in front of Castiel’s face, “I’ll cook, you clean.”

 

================================================

  
    Standing in the poorly lit kitchen, Dean was intensely and suddenly aware of just how different Castiel really was. He stood a little smaller, folded into himself and hovered, not waiting for instruction so much as inflection. Sighing, Dean grabbed the can opener- old school, but it would do the job. Owner of the place must have been a purist or like Sam said, ready for the end. Wood stove, oil lamps? It was like a way-back play-back in militant crazy town. Lighting up the stove Dean turned his head and because neither of them had said anything to break the up the awkward silence, he sighed again.  
    “Listen, I get that you’re not running at full capacity, but I’ve gotta know, where the hell are we?”  
    “I don’t know.”  
    “Then what the hell are we doing here?” Dean hovered his hand over the stove top to check the temperature and dumped their dinner unceremoniously into a pot. Trying the tap we was relieved to find everything still working- hadn’t been hot since day one, but drinkable. “Cas, seriously.”  
    “I don’t know where we are, Dean. We’re just... away.” He seemed exasperated but more lucid, “But we’re safe here, which is most important, and we don’t have to fight any more.”  
    Dean didn’t smash his fist on the wooden countertop even though he wanted to, instead he took a deep breath and tried another tactic. “Okay, fine, whatever. A little impromptu vacation in the middle of a world war, sure. How long before you can get us back?”  
    “I don’t know.”  
    “Is there anything you fucking do know?”  
    “Your beans are burning.”  
    “Shit!” Dean wrapped his hand in his shirt before grabbing the smoking handle, he’d let the fire inside get too hot. “Damnit! Seriously? Dude doesn’t even believe in propane?”  
    “Did you burn yourself?”  
    “No, it’s-” He could feel the cool of Castiel’s fingers weaving into his, thumb rubbing gently against his palm.  
    “You should be more careful, Dean.” Castiel looked at him reproachfully, “I can’t fix you or Sam now, if you’re hurt.”  
    “Yeah, yeah- I’m, yeah.” Snatching his hand back, Dean ignored the octave drop in Castiel’s pitch, reminded himself just how far up the creek they were and tried to forget the flush crawling up his neck. It was nothing, just the memory of a man- an angel- and somebody that Castiel wasn’t anymore. Just a prickle of an old-new feeling and as quickly as it came, gone again.  
    “I’ll rinse these out,” Castiel took the empty cans. “Best they don’t molder.”  
    And just like nothing happened, silent solidarity, or at least until dinner was done.

 

================================================

Jamestown, Virginia - Present Day

  
    Meg wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth, leave it to Castiel to ask the impossible and know that she’d be stupid enough to go along for the ride. Tears of a dragon, sands of time; the letter had told her exactly what to do, when and how and where she needed to end up, but ten rounds in and she was feeling more like a cold beer than an interspacial vacation. Damn things didn’t go down easy but squaring her shoulders, she knew the score.  
    One day Castiel was going to get her killed, and worse? She’d probably let him.

 

================================================

  
    Dean leaned back in his chair and groaned.  
    It was a decent meal all things considered. Really, he hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he wasn’t, and there was a degree of relaxed clarity in being full.  
    “Decent grub, eh?”  
    “Yeah- hell, tasted pretty…” Sam paled. He hadn’t thought of it before! They’d been eating out of the bunker’s stockpile for days, and he hadn’t even bothered to glance at the labels! “Dean, did you check the cans?”  
    “What, why?”  
    “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because Dick’s ingredient-X might be on the list?” Sam dragged the lamp closer and after a moment’s paused, snorted. “Where’d you even get this?”  
    “From the back, you saw me go.”  
    “Very funny. But seriously, where did you get it?”  
    “The shelf at the back. Then I opened it and then I cooked it.” Dean frowned, “What’s your problem? You look like you swallowed a-”  
    “This company has been out of business for like, fifty years!”  
Staring at Sam, Dean missed Castiel’s guilty side-glance.  
    “Well canned goods last for like ev-”  
    “The expiry is 1903.”  
    “Okay, so it stood the test of time. What is your-”  
    “Anything in there should be beyond rotten, we’re talking a century!”  
    Suddenly, Sam understood.  
    It made perfect sense, the unspoiled woods, the dirt road to nowhere, the lack of modern technology. Whoever had built the bunker hadn’t built it without modern amenities, they had built it with _all_ the modern amenities. All that time, they had been asking Castiel the wrong question.  
    “Cas…?”  
    “Yes, Sam?”  
     _“When are we?”_  
    “1901.”

 

================================================

**Part II**

================================================

  
    Zero to sixty, and Dean flew off the handle.  
    Sam was shouting and everything hit the head. They had just spent the last week waiting for Castiel to come to, hoping to hell it wasn’t too late to fix everything. Now, they were stranded a century before their own time with no feasible way to get back and if the world actually ended, this time there would be no question of exactly where the finger pointed.  
    Still yelling, neither of them realized that quietly but no less purposefully, Castiel had slunk back to the kitchen. When they finally did, Dean had had enough. It wasn’t fair that he had to clean up the mess, it wasn’t fair that everything was going to hell in a handbasket and it wasn’t fair that when it was all said and done, he was going to get the blame. It wasn’t fucking fair!  
    “Goddamnit! He’s taking us back and I don’t care if his waffles get crispy, okay?”  
    “He can’t! Just-”  
    “No, forget it. I’ve had enough of this dog and pony show.” Dean didn’t look nearly as angry as he did tired, “He doesn’t just get to break everything, and it’s just okay! Do you know what happens when we break things? People die, Sam. They die, and we live with it.”  
    “Dean-!”  
    But it was too late, he was already storming into the kitchen. Castiel didn’t startle when the galley doors slammed, just kept on washing. Somehow, that was the last straw.  
    "Just what the hell was your big plan, Cas?” Dean demanded, “Time travel, are you fucking kidding me? This is not how we fix things! You made a mess, so fine, whatever, we deal the old fashioned way. You don't just get to-” Frustrated, he threw up his hands. “You don’t get to play god and then when that goes south push rewind! I don’t care how, but you zap us the hell back tonight or-"  
    "I can't."  
    "Can't or won't?"  
    "Can’t,” He said simply. “And if I could, I wouldn’t."  
    "Who the hell gives you the right to make that decision?"  
    Castiel hesitated before curling quietly back into his headspace. Turning away from Dean, he carefully put all the dinner dishes in the sink and started to run the water. Dean just watched, fury boiling so hot in his gut until he could taste it. Like before in the cabin, small plates first and when Castiel started humming a quiet tune he shouldn’t recognize, Dean finally lost his temper.  
    Furious because Cas wasn't Cas, because they weren't where they belonged, because he couldn't fix anything, Dean grabbed the soapy plate from his hands and smashed it on the floor.  
    Another plate, then a cup, a bowl.  
    "Goddamnit! Stop cleaning!"  
    When Sam appeared looking panicked, Dean was holding onto the countertop white-knuckled and shaking and Castiel was tight-lipped but expressionless, already picking up pieces of dishware from the floor.  
    "What did you-"  
    "Find us a fucking way out of this place Sam, or so help me..."  
    "Jesus! Just- just go take a walk, cool off or something."  
    "Don't tell me what to-"  
    "Dean! Look at him!"  
    Castiel didn't look up, just carefully picked up each piece in order of size. It didn't seem like he even noticed them anymore, far away in a place where every shard made sense.  
    Sam shook his head, "Just go."  
    Dean opened his mouth to say something but what could he say? What hurt worse was that he'd wanted Castiel to fight back, punch him square in the jaw, tell him he'd had enough of his bullshit, be Cas again. Except, he wasn't and he didn't and now, he only felt that much worse.  
    “I’m...” What, sorry? That was nothing cheap and Dean knew it.  
    From down the hall, they both heard the door slam shut.  
    When he was sure that Dean was gone, Sam took a deep breath. Mostly, he was trying not to be angry because that wasn’t going to help the situation. For a minute he watched Castiel sweep away the last of the broken dishes and go back to washing and honestly, he understood why he did it. Housework was simple steps and simpler habituals, things he could do again and again and when he was done, there was clear and tangible evidence. Nobody needed to tell him he was doing a good job or that he was being useful, a stack of clean dishes would.  
    Sure, Sam didn't know that there were four-hundred and fifty-six separate leaves on the combined pattern total of their paisley dishes, that Castiel used exactly one-eighth of an ounce of dish soap per point-six plates or that he washed counter-clockwise, dried in reverse. He didn’t need to know because there was an easier explanation: Dean had given Castiel a job.  
    Stepping up to the sink, Sam grabbed a tea towel. He felt bad, even if he shouldn’t.  
    “He’s not going to stay mad forever, Cas.”  
    “I know.”  
    “He’s just...”  
    “I know.”  
    Quietly, Castiel washed and Sam dried and when Dean snuck back inside after midnight, nobody expected him to apologize and predictably, he didn’t. He was angry, had every right to be but still, Dean found himself seething until the wee hours of the morn unable to unravel that first incalculable strand of _why._ Time travel! What the hell had Cas been thinking?  
    Sam could have argued a hundred different reasons, but it wasn’t just that he’d done it, it was why. Because he was a few screws loose, because he was being controlled, because he’d cooked up another gonna-end-badly master plan? There were so many variables that Dean found himself reefing through his mental library trying to make a plan and finding that he couldn’t.  
    What the fuck did he even know about time travel?  
    Nothing, or at least mostly nothing. What he did know that they were dressed to stand out, his gun hadn’t even been made yet, they had no money and they were up shit creek, no paddle. You weren’t supposed to mess with history and worse, Dean had a feeling that their particular situation wasn’t an angel-special VHS version. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but in the more-than-likely event that they weren’t just sideline participants, what happened if they actually altered things? God, if they were stuck... They shouldn’t even go outside, talk to people, do anything that could be a ripple or a wrinkle stitched in time. They were prisoners, really.  
    Suddenly realizing that he was a stranger lost in time was disturbing enough, never mind the compounded itch of feeling completely and utterly useless. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t ask Castiel, and he knew he wouldn’t get a straight or sensical answer even if he tried. A nasty, nagging voice in the back of his head was pointing a metaphorical finger at him; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men and just like always, Winchester, gone and fucked it up again.

 

================================================

  
    Dean was aware he had fallen asleep, how he didn’t know. From behind him came the feeling of being watched but before he could turn he heard a familiar-deep, “Hello, Dean.”  
    “What are you doing here, Cas? Get out of my head.”  
    “I’m not in your head. You’re dreaming.”  
    “Whatever, get out.”  
    They were somewhere he couldn’t place; gloomy beachfront, then a sunlit kitchen that felt familiar.  
    “You should show me some respect.”  
    Dean snorted.  
    “You should kneel.”  
    Dean blinked.  
    “You should let me take care of that, for you.”  
    Suddenly he was nude, or was he nude before? Hard and still wearing his socks, Castiel was stepping into Dean’s airspace, mouth colliding into his, licking its way inside, sucking on his tongue. He made a startled noise- or thought he should- put his hands up to push Castiel off but instead, pulled him closer. Fisted his coat, crumpled against the breadth of his chest and when Castiel bit into the crook of his neck, licked the sweat, he shook. It’d been so long since he’d been touched, needed, fuck yes- shouldn’t- should- more-! God, the drag of Cas's stubble was a too-easy addiction and Dean groaned low and slow because those cool-soft fingers were fisting his dick so good.  
    “I can’t fix you here.”  
    “Why-”  
    “Because you’re not broken.”  
    How did it shift, how did everything change, did it matter? Castiel’s were hot wet kisses and there wasn’t anything worth feeling but the slide, the suckdown pull of no airspace between them.  
    “And neither am I.”  
    Dean was coming, cream-thick and over his hand. Blue eyes burning into his, a lingering kiss and suddenly, cruelly, he was awake and unbeknownst to him, Castiel was gone.

 

================================================

  
    Castiel took a deep, cleansing breath. It was a pretty morning.  
    He’d snuck out after Dean finally drifted off, carefully tip-toeing past the barracks and letting himself out into the night. It was cold and he felt it more than usual, but setting a brisk pace he eventually warmed up. He could have gone left or right down the road but ultimately, Dean had gone right and so did he. For the first half-hour he followed Dean’s footsteps but when he reached the midpoint where Dean turned around, he kept going.  
    There was a farm nearby, he could hear the baying of a heifer giving birth and the farmer’s boy yelling for his father. Such was the miracle of life, dragged into existence by brute strength and a working man’s hands. Later, he thought, he would stop in and feel the slime and velvet of her nose and if he had time, watch her nurse. He liked new and little living things.  
    Two hours down the road, the sun was starting to rise. Three hours and he could see the electric orange glow and by the fourth, the road took a sharp rise. When Castiel broke over the crest of the hill he could see a tiny town spread out, bank, general store, tailor. Naturally he didn’t stop to ask himself if he was appropriately dressed for the time period but as the cicadas started, he took off his coat. One suit was more or less similar to another and classicism in men’s fashion was a standby. If nobody checked the polyblend label and he didn’t make waves, it probably wouldn’t matter.  
    Slipping into town a stranger, Castiel smiled at a mother and child and sliding past them, pickpocketed her change purse before nodding to an elderly gentlemen none the wiser.  
    Inside the post office, Castiel found out where they were: Lebanon, Kanas. He’d meant to land in Lawrence, but time travel was an imprecise science. Seemingly confused by the cost of stationary and the value of his own currency, the spit-eyed clerk leered at him from behind the counter. Carefully and in an unreadable script Castiel penned out instructions and from his pocket, he produced a feather. It would have been problematic if he hadn’t kept one to spare, his grace was all but gone. Thirsty and a little hungry, if he’d tried to pull his wings from immeteria to substantia, nothing would have happened. He was functionally human, or at least playing the part in interim.  
    Regardless, the deed was done. Castiel had post-dated the letter over a century and he had no doubt it would arrive, both because he had a misplaced faith in the postal institution and also because he’d paid a hundred times the current market value to ensure his quote-unquote ‘da’yum funny joke’ would come due its punchline. Shaking his head the clerk pinned the envelope to the memo board as Castiel left. “Figg’m ‘em French,” He said. But all the same, pride was the cornerstone of good, American service. Sooner or later, a grubby letter would arrive in Indiana.

 

================================================

  
    Dean woke with a start. Dragging himself upright the first thing he noticed was an all-too familiar seep in his boxers and mildly embarrassed, he adjusted. Blindly he groped around in the dark until he found his lighter, rolled over, and was momentarily disoriented. It was the first time they’d slept in the upstairs bedrooms, before that it was the barracks on the ground floor.  
    Struggling with the covers, Dean tripped himself. Limping down the hall and swearing under his breath he checked that Sam was still sleeping and that Castiel was… Fuck, he was gone!  
    “Sam! Sam, get your ass out of bed Cas is-” Light was spilling in from the bunker door as Castiel brushed the road-dust from his slacks, “-back, apparently. Where the hell were you?”  
    “In town.”  
    Sam blanched, “What?”  
    “I had to mail a letter.”  
    “You and the friggin’ letters!” Dean threw up his hands, “Did anybody see you?”  
    “Yes.”  
    “Who?”  
    “The man smoking outside the general store, the men at the post office, a woman with her baby, a rather inquisitive horse, a-”  
    “Great, so the fucking whole town.” How much had he changed by being seen? Who and what had he affected, how big were the ripples? God, Dean had a headache the size of Jersey.  
    “Actually, there are quite a few people that didn’t see-”  
    “Just stop.” Dean held up a hand, “And why did you have to- you know what? I don’t even care. Sam, you awake now?”  
    “Yeah, I’m up.” He rubbed his eyes.  
    “Can you join me outside for a minute?”  
    “Uh, yeah- hang on.” Sam pulled his shirt over his head and realizing Castiel was about to follow them, hastily added, “Why don’t you see about breakfast or something, Cas?”  
    Not bothering to wait, Dean was already out the door, Sam in tow.  
    “Dean calm down. I know you’re m-”  
    “He went to town, Sam! Who knows who he saw, what he said?” Dean was pacing, raking a hand through his hair. “We're trapped! We're the rats and this is the sinkin friggin' ship and he's in there, doesn't give a crap. We can't stay here, we're in the middle of nowhere with an angel about three flavors short of his Fruity Pebbles, so tell me how is this okay with you?"  
    "I'm not saying it's okay, I'm saying you need to calm down! We don't- I think I get it, but..."  
    "Get what?"  
    Sam had been up all night, dredging up everything he knew or remembered about time travel, time theory, quantum physics. Embarrassing as it was, when he was younger, he’d been a little too smart and little too invested in Star Trek for his own good. Also, he’d had a lot of time on his hands. Regardless, piecing together what made most sense, Sam had a theory. There was always a chance that he was completely wrong, but... Well, it felt right and in their business, that counted.  
    "I’ve been going over everything and, I know we don’t know a lot about time travel but-” He hesitated, “We're in some kind of, temporal divergence, I think."  
    "English, Sam."  
    "We're in a time bubble."  
    "Great." Because that changed everything! Not. "Fine, so how do we get out of it?"  
    "I don't think we should. Just listen,” He added hastily, before Dean could say whatever the look on his face was implying. “If we do anything drastic, we don't know what could happen. For all we know, we kill us and there isn't an us to come back, so we just stop."  
    “Stop?”  
    “Like, existing.”  
    "So what, we just stay here until we die? Awesome plan." Dean was pacing again, "We can't even talk to anyone, do anything! And who the hell knows what he’s already broke!"  
    "Well, I think we can but-”  
    "But? There are a lot of variables for but here, Sam.”  
    "No, well yes... Not really. Time travel is-” Sam paused again, it was difficult to explain. "I think whatever we do needs to be low-key."  
    "What?"  
    "Okay, have you ever chatted up a waitress?"  
    Dean snorted, "Well there was this-"  
    "Shut up.” Focus, Dean. “Did you remember her a year later?"  
    "Probably didn't remember her a week later."  
    "Even if you talked for a while?"  
    "Yeah, so?"  
    "So, that's it." Sam pinched his nose bridge, "I think the entire thing is making sure we're not remembered, or at least remembered for anything integral. If we’re just, here and not here-here, I don’t think anything changes, or at least not in any way that’s going to be significant. It’s like, there isn’t supposed to be an us here so if we’re not us, not notably, then even if we alter things, we didn’t really _change_ anything.”  
    “Have you even watched Back to the Future?”  
    "Dean, just listen to me.” Sam turned, “We can't change anything directly, and we can't change it so that anyone knows that it was us, but we can change it. It makes sense."  
    "Yeah, you know what every book and movie in the known universe says about time? You don’t mess with it, Sammy.” Still pacing, Dean could feel the sun on his neck. “Let’s say we stop in for a chat at the tavern and we hold up the barkeep, who was gonna get iced two minutes later, and he doesn’t, and six years from now he’s got a kid who grows up to be, I don’t know, Jack the friggin’ Ripper.”  
    "I don't think time works that way." Fuck, it was so hard to explain!  
    "Great. We've got a do-it-yourself quantum physicist." Dean wanted a drink, a hot shower and a redo button for pretty much his entire life. "Goddamnit!"  
    Sam sighed, "I think it's more time-fluid thematical?"  
    "Again, English."  
    "Okay, take us. Take me, for example. Azazel,” Dean’s upper lip curled but Sam pressed on, now wasn’t the time or the place. “A million different things had to happen for that to happen, right? Unless they didn't. Like, key frames or something."  
    "So you're saying if we don't change the big stuff, or the stuff that involves us directly, everything will still happen the way it's supposed to?"  
    "More or less, yeah."  
    "How?"  
    "If there are key frames there are key people-"  
    "What, like you and me? Like mom?”  
    "Yeah. So-”  
    “Cas took me back for a ride in the past, how come I couldn’t change things?”  
    “Well, that wasn’t really time travel, was it?” Dean paused and Sam continued. “It was more like being dropped into a memory, from what you described. You could interact with it, but you couldn’t change it because it wasn’t really happening. Like, virtual reality or something.”  
    “Like a video game.”  
    “Exactly.” Sam nodded, “So if we say, accidentally save some dentist who dies six years later from a heart attack, nothing really changes. He wasn’t part of the show."  
    "What if he has kids, or kills somebody? Hell, what if his kid’s kids kill somebody?"  
    "What if he doesn't or they don't?"  
    "Yeah, but what if? And what if they end up Johnny Keyframe and congratulations, we've just given someone else our shit lives. We can’t do that!”  
    "I don't think causality works like that."  
    "But you don't know!"  
    "Well, what happens if we go back, then?" Sam could feel the early prickle of a sunburn blooming across the back of his neck. "Maybe we kill Dick Roman, maybe we don’t. Maybe Dick's not even the biggest problem, and maybe it's something else months or years down the road and we still get killed. I’m just trying to see some good in all this, it’s an opportunity!”  
    "To what, Sam, rot in history? Let good people die?"  
    "No! To help people, to take everything we know and take the time to figure out the rest and give somebody a leg-up later on, maybe? Do you know what we'd have done with- I don’t know, a guidebook or something, Dean? Back when we started, we didn't even know you could kill a demon, we didn't know anything!"  
    "But we learned it."  
    "Yeah, and how many people did we lose along the way?"  
    "Damnit! I can't just sit here while..."  
    "While we're still fighting that fight?" Sam was trying to be tactful but as usual, Dean was making it difficult. "We're still there, Dean."  
    "That's not us!"  
    "It is us, and we're us! There are two us' right now, and if that us dies, we don't, but if we die here, everybody dies. Don't you get it? I’m not saying I don’t want to go back- I want to go back, sure, but what if we can’t? This isn’t some butterfly effect thing, if the whole world could just change like that, the future we remember wouldn’t be the same.”  
    "We need to talk to Cas."  
    "Five minutes ago he was a few Fruity Pebbles short and now I’m telling you things you don’t want to hear and his opinion suddenly matters again?" Sam realized he had gone to far a fraction of a second too late and found himself shrinking away from Dean’s venomous glare.  
    "He brought us here, he should know!”  
    "He doesn't know anything."  
    "How do we know he's not lying?"  
    "I don't think he knows how to lie anymore," Sam looked at the ground. "He's still Cas, he's just..."  
    "Just what, Sam?"  
    "Simpler."  
    What Dean wanted to say was _fine, you deal with him then_ but what he actually said wasn’t that at all. He was frustrated but more than he wanted answers, and he wanted a few minutes to himself. “Go have something to eat and for Christ’s sake, keep an eye on him.”  
    “What are you going to do, stay out here?”  
    “I just need a breather, okay.”  
    And Dean just kept taking a breather, every day for the better part of a week because he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. In the meantime, Sam had started jotting down notes about everything he knew about more or less everything they knew anything about, but Dean was going stir-crazy. Every morning he padded out of his room knife in hand and checked to see if Sam was still sleeping, then checked that Castiel was still in his room. Sometimes, if he was lucky, Castiel didn’t smile up at him and for a second and a space in time, he could imagine him with a warm but familiar frown.  
    Most often, Dean spent his time wondering if the world was ending without him and struggling with the fact that day by day, he wasn’t as sure as he had been that he cared. Sometimes he just stared at nothing and reminded himself that when Castiel’s hand brushed his at breakfast, it wasn’t really Cas, just whatever was left of the what and who he used to be.  
    Sitting out and soaking up the sun, he wondered if it mattered.

 

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    Sam was hunched over the kitchen table, scribbling as usual.  
    He’d already underlined vampire twice in sloppy script because it was easier to start with the things he knew inside and out, but sooner or later he was going to need more material. Journals, books, reference indexes. There were hunters in history, but how was he going to find them? He couldn’t waltz in and ask for a hand, that made him notable. He thought about writing them, but he wasn’t sure it would work. Frustrated, he wrote DECAPITATE in block letters and paused. It seemed like common sense, but what if he’d never run into a vampire before, what would he need to know? After another few minutes he added, DO NOT ENGAGE AT NIGHT.  
    Chewing on the end of his pen Sam figured he’d need more paper, too. Ink, probably. Actually, he needed a lot of things like some new clothes, for starters. Despite washing between layers, there was still a kind of ground-in natural funk that came from over-wear. If they were in it for the long haul, they were going to need things which meant they were going to need money.  
    How were they going to pull it off? Theft was an option, he thought, but so was getting caught. Maybe he’d talk to Dean later, see what he thought- oh, right. Dean was still sulking. Yelling hadn’t gotten him what he wanted so he’d taken to lurking outside between meals.  
    Sometimes, the best way to deal with Dean’s temper was to ignore it until it burned out hot or until he realized he was being an asshole. Generally, Sam found it pragmatic to just wait and see how things panned out, but then there was the added complication of what to do about Cas.  
    He felt a little sorry for him, the way he wafted aimlessly through the house, looked masterlessly at the door, pined. Sometimes he would sit with Sam just for the company, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the dynamic wasn’t the same. Dean was- Cas and Dean were... Sam thumbed his pen lid and stuck a mental tack squarely on the issue; it was like watching someone else’s ugly divorce. Dean was just so bloody- “Hungry?”  
    He snapped his head around.  
    “Huh?”  
    “You’re eating your pen.” Castiel observed.  
    “Oh- uh,” Sam wiped the spittled end on his jeans, startled. “No, I’m uh, fine. Did you just get up?”  
    “No.” He said.  
    “Where’s Dean?”  
    “Outside.”  
    “Figured as much.”  
    After a moment, Castiel picked up one of his drafts. “What are you working on?”  
    “A book- well, sort of... Hunter’s notes, I guess.”  
    “Why?” Leave it to Cas to get right to the point.  
    “It just... Well, I mean it’ll probably come in useful to someone, right?” Sam hesitated, he hadn’t really decided what he was doing, yet. He had a vague idea of what he wanted to accomplish, but that was it. “I just thought that while we’re here I should-”  
    “Keep busy.” Well, when he said it like that...  
    “Yeah, more or less.”  
    “Hmmm.” And sometimes, that’s just how the conversation went.  
    Sam wasn’t sure what to say, but Castiel appreciated the silence. Cosmically the conversation was going on around them because friends didn’t always need to talk. After a half hour, Sam started write again and Castiel watched, listened because he liked the way the pen scritched across paper. Fifty feet plus concrete away, he wished he could feel Dean’s heartbeat, breathe in his tension and know there was still an order to his universe.  
    Alphanumerical, by size, shape and sense of self, it began and ended if he knew.

 

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    It was late afternoon, about four weeks since they’d arrived, sun slanting through the trees. Dean was sitting outside, legs dangled over the ledge above the door and back braced against the hill. He would never get used to living underground like a hobbit, and he didn't plan to try. They were going to get out. Sam could prattle on about time travel or bubbles or whatever the hell else, but the way Dean saw it was simple: he didn't sign up for the fucking Billy Pilgrim Experience. If Cas did it, he could undo it. He owed them that.  
    Dean didn't let himself dwell on the dreams plaguing in his subconscious, because they made his righteous anger feel a little less righteous. Sam didn't appreciate the distinction, but Dean knew Cas, knew him well, and the thing that had been sitting across from him at breakfast wasn't even a shadow of him. The fantasies were outdated and unfair. The remnant of Castiel that walked through their underground rooms, that washed dishes and learned card games from Sam, was not an appropriate focus for his libido. That angel was a shell. Dean tugged a weed from the ground, dirt clumped around its roots, and stared at it glumly before jettisoning it over the ledge and onto the step below.  
    "Well, throwing things at me already? How's that for a welcome?"  
     _What the hell?_ Dean thought. _That sounded like..._  
    "Guess you haven’t missed me," Meg said. "Big surprise there."  
    Dean's pistol was drawn and he was glowering down the barrel of it, but Meg just grinned up at him, teeth wolfishly bared. He should have seen her approaching! Unless she'd been lurking there since he came outside- no, he hadn’t gotten that soft. She must have materialized on the stoop, and out of thin air? That meant magic.  
    Dean's mind ran in a logic loop. They were in 1901. Meg was there. She was looking at him like she knew who he was, so she wasn’t some look-alike throw-back. But, she hadn't come with them and Cas, so unless demons could bend time now... Dean rubbed a hand across his eyes, the pistol still leveled. He hated time travel.  
    "In case you were wondering, I have an invitation," Meg said. "So why don't you pop down and open the door for a lady."  
    She waved a piece of paper, yellowed with age. Dean frowned and scrambling down the hill, he kept his gun out, despite knowing it wouldn't do much except make him feel better. Walking up to her he grabbed the letter out of her hand. It contained their current location, a heartfelt but overly formal request for her presence and if she’d brought it, the second page would have told him how she’d done it. But then, Meg wasn’t stupid.  
    “What are you doing here?”  
    “Told you, I got the official invite.”  
    “Why?”  
    “Short, dark and handsome couldn’t carry us all. Probably because he had two-hundred and thirty pounds of horse’s ass hanging off his neck.” Dean tightened his grip on the gun.  
    “"How the hell did you get here without an angel?" He asked.  
    He was steadfastly ignoring the way the cursive scrawl circled in his brain like it would repeat for hours: _I’ve prepared a place for you._ Priorities! If Meg could time travel, someone had taught her how. What if the letter had explained a way? It would be the most useful bit of information Dean had come across in weeks. Turning the letter over again, he stared as if the promised second sheet would appear if he just glared at it hard enough. _I wait in hope to enjoy the comfort of your presence again soon._  
    "Not so fast," Meg said. "How about you open the door and pour me a drink first. Where's the boyfriend?"  
    &nbsp Dean ignored the jab, running through his list of reasons that this was a terrible idea. Still, opening the door, Dean held it for her, and felt the edge of the letter crumple in his hands.  
    Meg stepped easily around the edges of the demon trap they'd scratched onto the floor the first week right after moving in. No surprise there, just the usual old dance. He considered pointing the gun at her again, or shooting her just because she deserved it, but if he fired a gun inside he'd probably end up with nothing more than a burst eardrum. _I’ve prepared a place for you._ Dean remembered that they had a fourth cot, empty. It was in Cas's room. Cas had even laundered fresh sheets, left them folded at the foot of the bed. Dean had assumed it was just another one of his housework-related, inexplicable compulsions. Now, he knew better. Letting the letter drop to the floor, he holstered his gun. Sam was coming out of the kitchen, and Dean watched his eyes widen in surprise.  
    "What the-?" Sam said.  
    But before he could finish, Cas appeared in the doorway. He perked up, eyes brighter than a kid's on Christmas morning. He walked up to Meg and clasped her hand in both of his own and Dean fought back the bile rising in his throat. Not that he had any claim, but Meg? She just pissed him off. He paced a few steps, uselessly, and then stared at the wall with all the forced intent he could muster. He pretended he couldn't see the earnest way Cas was looking at Meg. Wasn’t it damn precious, she’d tried to kill them a hundred times and now it was nothing but gooey-eyed gladness. Fuck them both, just because.  
    "You came," Cas said.  
    "Cas, what’s going on?"  
    "He invited her," Dean said flatly. "Guess this place felt one species short too."  
    Sam stared at him, eyes moving between Cas and Meg, still holding hands, and his brother, waiting for further explanation. Dean slumped against the wall.  
    "Right, okay," Sam said. "But, um, how?"  
    "Nifty spell," Meg said. "Maybe I'll show you. But first, what does a girl have to do to get a drink around this place?"

 

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    For the first half hour there was a lot of push and pull, arguments half started and meaningful glances exchanged. Meg waited for them to sort themselves out. Cas was genuinely happy to see her, Dean was furious, and Sam was uncomfortable. It was going to be a fun evening. Eventually, they settled into a tense little circle around the kitchen table and broke out a signature bottle. Say what you wanted about some madman’s paranoid bunker, but credit for his good taste.  
    Meg showed Cas the scratches the dragon had made on her arm, deep gouges that he ran his fingers over in concern. She insisted it didn't hurt, all bravado, and Castiel’s fingers lingered on her arm. He sat too close, but she knew it was without guile. Dean, however, looked like he was trying to remember how the Latin went for an exorcism. He wouldn't try it, but she wondered if she would bump into herself in hell if he did. She wondered what herself would have to say. Deciding she'd rather drink than think, Meg reached for the bottle.  
    After three tumblers full of whisky, Meg sent Sam outside to grab her bag. She smirked at the sight of him hefting a pink duffle down the stairs and Cas looked at her in that way of his, like he could see right through her, and it put her on edge. She’d gone through a lot of trouble to get herself to the past because he asked, and that wasn't something she wanted to look at too closely. _Focus, Meg,_ she chided herself. _Keep your cool._  
    "So, Clarence, you gonna ask me up to see your etchings?"  
    Castiel frowned at her. So did Dean. Tension and seething frustration still in place, it looked like Meg hadn't missed her window after all. She wasn't sure if she should be relieved or not. If nothing else, she could stir things up and that was enough, wasn't it? Besides, getting a rise out of Dean was as easy as it was fun.  
    "I don't have any etchings," Cas said.  
    "Oh, well then." Her voice was dry. "I guess you'll have to show me your bedroom."

 

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    "I washed your sheets," Castiel said as Meg had tossed her duffle onto the bunk in the bedroom which she was apparently going to be sharing. Dean was hovering in the doorway, watching her as she dumped her bag onto the mattress. Making sure to shift the pile of clothes around so that Dean could see that she'd packed skimpy, lacy underthings, she smirked when he turned on his heels and stalked off. Then, she shut the door.  
    Cas was oblivious to the exchange, or rather, was acting oblivious. She could tell from the way he was arranging and rearranging the odd assortment of things on the nightstand that he was upset. She walked up behind him, slid her hands into the pockets of his coat and rested her chin on his shoulder.  
    "What's all this?" She asked.  
    There was a small stack of smooth pebbles next to Cas's perfectly made bed. They were arranged, she realized after a moment, by color- the darkest pointed to her side of the room and the lightest to Castiel's. She rolled her eyes and felt him turn toward her. It was the little things that reminded her of just how backwards it had all gotten; heaven, hell and crazy in between.  
    "I collected them by the stream," he said like it mattered.  
    Before she could catch his eye, he had grabbed her injured arm again. It was really barely a scratch, but he bent to look closely at the three long grooves. He traced the edges gently and she allowed it, gazing at the back of his head. He was a mess. She should have come sooner, should have known that those two idiots couldn’t manage to keep all his ducks in a row by themselves.  
    "I've been resting, but it isn't enough." He admitted. "I can't fix it."  
    "Shh," she said. "Come here."  
    She knew he wasn't talking about the scratches on her arm, and she stepped closer, crowded him until he was forced to look at her. But, his gaze was dull. _Damn_ , she thought. Sitting down on his bed, he was forced to follow or let go of her. Sitting next to her, Castiel stared at the pebbles on the nightstand. The thing was, he wasn’t looking at the rocks but at their histories, the rivers that eroded them, the boulders they crumbled from, a universe of ebb and flow to which he was a sudden part, chipped away by circumstance.  
    "The third one from the left is the oldest," he said absently. "I suspect it’s tired."  
    "Why’s it tired, Clarence?" But, he didn't answer.  
    Meg reached for his hand and stroked her thumb along the soft inner skin of his wrist, setting off a chain of memories. A hospital bed, the angry red bite of restraints, right there, right where her thumb was pressed. Long nights of questioning her motives and dragging a damp rag against his sweat-soaked skin. Finally, his eyes tracked her movements. _Better_ , she thought.  
    "Did you miss me?"  
    Her tone was glib but the words still felt needy, and she regretted them as soon as they left her mouth. She compensated by leaning over and biting his earlobe, sucking it between her teeth, as she purred low in his ear. Not a nursemaid any more, no need to feel that twinge of guilt because she wasn’t taking advantage, she was seizing opportunity.  
    It was different, it was- "Very much, yes."  
    So much sincerity, always, but he didn't mean it the way she'd meant it. Nothing for it. He didn't react to her lips against his skin, just looked at her with those wide blue eyes and smiled to see her next to him again. They'd had some good times, but it would never be anything but- she cut off that train of thought before it could get away from her, crawled into Castiel's lap, liquid movement, coy and smirking. He finally loosened his grip on her arm and let her slide her hands along his chest, grip his shoulders under his coat. He was looking at her lucidly now, their vessels pressed hotly against each other’s as he buried his face in her hair. Meg smelled just like he remembered, brimstone and alcohol-tinged gardenia.  
    Castiel found himself carried away by sentiment; he was stupidly grateful she'd come to him in the same vessel, soothed by the familiar way her true face flickered over the other one. Nothing was working out the way he planned. He let the silky fall of her hair cover his face, he breathed her in and hoped she could help him begin to see clearly again, like she had before, like only she had. He wanted to tell her about the waking dreams, the hallucinations and the way he knew, somehow, that he was forgetting something vitally important. The way it was easier to stay present now, but he still needed her to ground him. She was here now, and she was warm, but she never smelled exactly right, never had countable freckles or pink-bowed lips. Familiar in the best-worst kind of ways because he needed her, knew he did, but wanted something else.  
    Castiel was laying back on the bed, like innumerable times before, and he turned to check on the pebbles on the nightstand. Everything was supposed to be different, here, but this was the same without feeling the same. He felt the gray confusion creeping in around the edges of his eyes, four little pebbles on the nightstand, and the weight of an unduly complex demon pressing down against his hips. He didn't understand her at all. He had missed her so much but she was moving against him, tongue and teeth and fingernails, complicating things.  
    There was something about the pebbles that he had failed to do, he thought absently. If he could just get them arranged, if he could just get the order right! Meg’s hand pressed warm on his cheek and turned his head back to look at her. She kissed him; her tongue stroked along his lips, licked its way inside his mouth, and he opened up to her because it felt like a good habit.  
    A moment, but then he shuddered under her, jerked away. No, no, no! The arrangement was wrong. It was wrong; he had to fix it, do it now- he couldn't! There had to be a way to see it clearly. Green eyes curved into his headspace, made the shape of her feel soft and strange. He could hear the rustle of his dead brother's wings, always a precursor to hours of blackness. Why had he brought them here? Why wasn't it working, why wasn't it easy? Meg gripped his hair, pulled his gaze back. He met her mouth and let focus bleed back into his mind, stayed present with an effort and an anchor. He wanted her, but it wasn’t the same.  
    "Please," he said, but he wasn’t sure what he was actually asking.  
    She had already rolled off him,understanding before he could come up with the words. Her hand still stroked through his hair as they lay side by side on the cot, a pleasant, soothing motion. He curled his body away from her, gazing at his pebbles and taking comfort in the slow caress against his scalp. He reached to the nightstand, selected one smooth, round stone, stroked its ancient surface, brought it to his lips. Her hand moved to his back, gentle circles between his shoulder blades that weren't asking for anything this time. He felt himself calm and breathing through his nose, he whispered a promise into the curve of its surface. Stone was impermanent, was and always would be a victim of time. There was something significant he was forgetting, or it felt like there was, but Meg curled her body against his and draped her arm over his chest. "Too late after all," she said. "Just my luck."

 

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**Part III**

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    A month later they were out of coffee, Sam had cut himself on the tin of sardines he’d been trying to open for breakfast, and Dean had already stalked off for his morning walk just before Meg sauntered into the kitchen. Sam sucked his thumb into his mouth and made a face at the fishy-copper taste. Meg assessed the scene with a raised brow. It was going to be one of those days.  
    “Good morning,” he said, tone clipped. Turning to the sink and running the cold water from the faucet over the cut, Sam knew it had already stopped bleeding but it gave him something to do. He figured Meg was on her way out, taking Cas for a walk, as usual. Down to the creek and back, and if Dean’s walks took him in the opposite direction, well, that was his stupid, pig-headed brother for you. Sam turned around wiping his hands on the towels to find Meg still there, leaning back against the counter, hips jutted forward, and looking up at him with a resigned expression.  
    “Your brother stole my pet angel this morning,” she said. “What’s for breakfast?”  
    That was unexpected. Dean had left before Sam had gotten up, dressing in the dark in the room they shared and shuffling out in his sock feet. Sam wondered whether Dean had invited Cas to share his morning walk or if it had been the other way around. Or if Meg had anything to do with it. Probably not, she sure as hell didn’t look happy about the development.  
    “We’re out of coffee,” Sam said. “You can have some of these, if you want.”  
    Meg wrinkled her nose but stalking across the kitchen, she leaned against the counter close enough that her hair brushed his arm and took a dramatic sniff from the sardine can. She shook her head, stood back up and Sam sighed. “There’s still crackers.”  
    “Got any drink left?”  
    Settling on either side of the kitchen table, Meg took a pull from the whisky bottle that had been left on the floor. Glumly, Sam speared a sardine with his fork. When Meg spoke, it was around an unladylike mouthful of cracker mash.  
    “So,” she said. “I’ve been thinking.”  
    Sam waited, pulled a sliver of fishbone free from where it had caught in his teeth. Leaning forward, both elbows on the table, Meg’s mouth twisted into a conspiratorial grin. Admittedly, she didn’t mind Sam. Too tall, a little dozy but after you’ve taken a ride in somebody’s head you end up with a soft spot. Not a big one, mind, but all the same, he was decent conversation.  
    “Noticed you guys are a little hard-up for cash, but y’know, this whole time travel thing?” She paused, mostly because she enjoyed being dramatic. “Best get-rich-quick scheme since Ponzi.”

 

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    Birdsong lilted through Castiel thoughts, dragging them upward in the only way that meant peace. He let his head fall back, caressed by sunlight, as he crouched at the side of the creek with his shoes sinking into the mud. Dean was gracelessly descending the bank, scattering pebbles and uprooting grass, but the birds didn’t fall silent. Grabbing his shoulder to balance as he sank down in the mud beside Castiel, Dean let go - a wistful look, nearly - and then he plunged his hands into the cold water of the creek.  
    Castiel watched him splash water on his face, shift, sit back down in the mud even though it would stain his clothes and Sam would frown and Meg would refuse to take responsibility for the laundry. Often, Castiel tried to remember what family was like but without summoning an apparition, it was difficult. If he thought too hard he’d look up and see across the creek a span of wings that weren’t there. Family, or at least the memory of it.  
    “We could probably catch some fish down that way,” Dean said.  
    Castiel followed the creek with his eyes. There was a slow pooling sidesplit of water where the current relaxed into depth. If he weren’t so tired, he could have seen their fluttering heartbeats from here. Instead, he trusted that Dean knew where the fish would be.  
    “I’d like that.”  
    There was a shared memory that Castiel could almost feel Dean thinking of with him. The sun was stretching above the trees, littering the streambed with glittering points of light. Castiel watched them as Dean interrupted every long pause with comments about fishing and lures and the best kind of bait at the optimum time of day. Of course, they only had whatever had been stocked, but the principal was the same. He talked for the sake of talking, and Castiel was content to listen.  
    It was hard to explain, not that he’d tried, but he remembered so many things about the world, about people, about his past and present and future. There was so much swimming around in his head and in the spaces between sickness. Sucking up Sam’s hell had damaged him, but he was healing in slow increments, was able to pick apart what was real and what wasn’t. If he was tired it was harder, but in the warm sunshine and after some rest, it got easier and easier.  
    He felt like himself again, sitting side by side with Dean on a quiet morning in the woods. The grayness of his thoughts receded, a faint murmur lurking in the back of his mind, and the nonexistent voices were silent. If he could just rest, maybe they would fall away for good. Clarity came gradually. If he didn’t try too hard to think about time and if he kept the memory of past bloodshed at bay, Castiel could stay present for a little while longer.  
    Quietly, he let his hand curl in the mud next to Dean’s.

 

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    “Right, so we’ve ruled out winning lottery numbers,” Sam said.  
    The tin of sardines was empty and he’d already knocked back a tumbler because, okay, it was only nine o’clock but demons were a bad influence by definition. Also, he didn’t have anything he had to do or anywhere to be. Sam wasn’t sure at what point he’d stopped waiting for her to attack him and thrown himself into scheming, but the fact was she was the one sitting on the other side of the table and, for all their storied past, there was something in the way she stayed.  
    “Too much press,” Meg agreed. “And bank vault access codes and sweeping Antique’s Roadshow are both too much work.”  
    “What about investments?”  
    Sam refilled his glass and took another swig that burned the aftertaste of salt and fish off his tongue. Meg laughed, “Well, I was going to say blackmail, but, okay, white collar.”  
    “Really, though,” Sam said. “Something like the HBC-”  
    “Hudson’s Bay?”  
    “Yeah.” He was surprised she’d known, “It wouldn’t take much. Just a few dollars a couple decades back and we’ll-”  
    “Be rolling in it?”  
    “Pretty much.”  
    Meg considered it. It was subtle, sure, but they didn’t want to draw attention. Pop around here and there, investing and collecting, and then they could make this place sexier than the Versailles for all its crystal. Before she’d made the time jump, she’d drained the whole dragon, and apparently angel-boy didn’t need her to hover. Maybe it was time to pluck some feathers and get back on the road, get the aftertaste of Castiel’s existence right out of her system, move on, move up, make money.  
    “Sounds like a plan, big boy.” Meg clinked her glass to his, and together, they drank.

 

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    Eventually, Dean ran out of things to say about fishing.  
    He wasn’t sure if Cas was listening, the way he stared at the water rippling along, but at least he wasn’t smiling, acting, putting on the mask. He was just looking at the creek. Dean sighed, swatted at a bug and thought about things. The silence stretched out between them, but for once it wasn’t uncomfortable. The morning was cool, and the mud seeping through his jeans positively frigid, but he wasn’t in any hurry to get back to their weird little underground hovel and play house.  
    He could feel the warmth of Cas's hand where it rested next to his own.  
    "Look," Dean said.  
    He gathered the threads of his resolve and plowed ahead with a conversation he'd played out in his head a dozen times. He needed to man up, push aside the awkwardness of the topic, and just ask.  
    "I don't know what this... thing is between you and Meg, and I don't want to know. But you know you don't have to do anything you don't want to, right?"  
    Cas smiled. It wasn't the blank, frightening smile that haunted Dean's thoughts. It was just Cas. "I know you think I'm insane," He said.  
    Dean huffed. A million examples sprung up in his thoughts: Cas's inability to hold any kind of logical conversation, his diatribes on bees or cosmetics or his sudden fascination with board games. He didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but it was frustrating to think he couldn’t actually recognize his own madness. Dean should be able to fix it, to pull him back and put him together. But he couldn't fix Cas any more than he’d been able to fix Sam.  
    "Look, man, we don't have to talk about it."  
    Cas shook his head and maybe it was false hope, but he seemed almost himself. "I'm not,” He said. “I understand the difference between reality and... the rest. I just-" Castiel paused, face screwed up as he searched for an explanation. "I have trouble focusing."  
    Dean’s eyes met his and Castiel hesitated, glanced down, and then looked at Dean in a way reminiscent of how he had before. Cas's fingers slid against his wrist, tentatively.  
    "Touch helps."  
    Dean took Cas's hand in his own before he'd fully processed the sentence. He could feel Cas's pulse under his fingertips, moved his thumb over it in a sure, strong movement. He felt Cas tremble, and Dean stretched his palm upward to trace the lines of his wrist. Cas sighed, and when Dean looked into his eyes he could see _him_ there. Tracing Cas's lifeline with his thumbnail in a gentle scratch, he remembered the warehouse, with Sam. It was just something to keep him grounded, right?  
    It made sense, of course it did. Cas had absorbed his brother's madness wholesale. Dean should have thought to try this before. He nodded, stroked Cas's palm and he wanted to push forward, touch more, he reigned in his self control. This wasn't about wanting, this was about taking care of Cas who'd been brave enough to look him in the eye and ask for exactly what he needed. What he'd been getting from a demon while Dean sulked. Dean nodded again. He could do this for Cas. He could hold his hand and not ask for anything more.  
    "Like Sammy." He said.  
    It wasn't an accusation, it wasn't meant as one. Dean had said it to show he understood, that he was going to help, but Cas's face fell all the same. Dean was horrified to see the blankness creep back in, that dull look that haunted him. He wondered if he'd imagined the brightness from a moment before. Cas smiled at him, and there it was again. He felt sick, he'd said the wrong thing. He always said the wrong thing. Cas didn’t jerk away from him, not physically, but he might as well have. Dean let his hands drop to the mud, holding nothing.  
    They walked back through the woods and Cas talked about the bugs and plants, about goddamn rabbits. Dean recognized it for what it was. A deflection. A retreat. He wanted to reach for Cas, shake the clarity back into his eyes, but Cas wouldn't shut up and Dean kept his hands securely in his pockets all the way back.

 

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    Dean didn’t expect to find Meg and Sam drinking in the kitchen, seeing as it wasn’t even noon and it was Meg and Sam, laughing, having a good time. Sam looked up at him with that grin he got when he was a half-pint away from being tanked. _Really?_ Dean thought.  
    “Celebrating a little early, aren’t we?” He quipped. “What, find more coffee?”  
    “Investments,” Sam said. “Not just coffee, Dean, but, like, a big shiny espresso machine. Or whatever, you know, twentieth century equivalent is but... Meg and I figured it all out.”  
    “You and Meg,” Dean repeated pinching the bridge of his nose. Already, felt a headache coming on. Too bad new best-buddies Sam and Meg had finished the whisky. He could feel Cas tense behind him as he sensed conflict about to erupt. Seemingly, Meg sensed it too, and was up and running her hands along Cas's shoulders before Dean could do anything about it. Not that he could, really, but it didn’t matter anymore.  
    “Hey, Clarence, can I borrow you for a minute? I need to, ah, restock.”  
    Dean didn’t want to think about what that could be a euphemism for but Meg was already dragging Cas back to their bedroom and Sam still had that same stupid grin. Yeah, this was barreling toward conflict all right. He was pissed, Sam was there and he fucking knew better!  
    “Would’ve thought you’d learned your lesson about dancing with the devil by now, Sammy.”

 

================================================

  
    Meg’s voice was a purr in Castiel’s ear, her body pressed up against him from behind, breath hot against his neck. Her touch was firm, demanding as they crouched together on the thin mattress of Castiel’s bed.  
    “Spread ‘em nice and wide for me, baby,” she said. “This’ll only hurt for a sec.”  
    Castiel was embarrassed, shame pooling in his gut as he tried to manifest his wings long enough for Meg to get the feathers she needed. He was still so exhausted, trembling with effort to do something that for him, should be as easy as breathing. His wings stuttered in and out of physicality as he dragged them onto the human plane; it ached, felt wrong, and as her hands gripped tight he resisted the urge to give up- he didn’t want her to leave anyway.  
    Still, she managed to grab a feather, pinching the base and pulling before his wings snapped out of existence again. He let out a shaky breath, felt her run a soothing hand between his shoulderblades. Dean needed things and so did Sam, and if Meg was going to go and get them, he had to make sure she had what she needed, even if it wasn’t easy.  
    “Come on, Clarence,” she said. “Round trip fare is two, minimum. Never knew you to not be able to get it up.”  
    He was on his hands and knees on the cot, sweat dripping down the side of his face and limbs shaking, and for all the naivety she tried to ascribe to him, he wasn’t ignorant of the sexual overtones. It made the slow drag of her hand through his hair humiliating, the bite of her fingernails against his scalp an uncomfortable prickle. He felt a twist in his gut, complicated because he needed her hands on him as much as he’d rather they be someone else’s. It felt good, despite everything, and her touch helped him concentrate. He spread his wings for her again.  
    “There’s my pretty angel,” she hummed.  
    He felt her tug at his feathers, felt a few slip free into her hands with a pinprick burn. Her lips pressed an apology into his skin. For the half second of pain, for leaving him, for her brazen words. It was enough. He slackened and lay down, wingless on the bed and let her pet his hair. She had almost a dozen feathers in her hand, showed them to him like cards before a magic trick, fanned out in front of her nose with a coy peek over the edge. Then, she pressed her lips to his forehead and stuffed his feathers into her handbag.  
    “Be back before you miss me,” she said, and then she was gone.  
Through the quiet, Castiel couldn’t hear Dean and Sam arguing in the kitchen anymore but he was too exhausted to bother going downstairs. Besides, he didn’t want to go down and exist in the space between their tense silence. Instead, he lay back on the bed, let his thoughts return to the river.  
    Dean had held his hand. Only for a moment, but it had electrified the barely-there edges of his exhausted grace. He had been able to feel Dean’s soul thrumming under his skin, heard his heartbeat, was sure he hadn’t imagined the way his thumb had chased his in lazy circles. Exhaling, Castiel felt the sweat cooling on his temples and let his eyes drift shut. It was peaceful; after the effort he had expended manifesting his wings he couldn't even feel the presence of the Winchesters in the next room. No, just the slow, steady beat of his own heart.  
    Thoughts drifting he remembered how Dean's hand had felt on his wrist, firm, authoritative pressure as he traced the lines into his palm. He wondered what Dean's hands would feel like if they had slid up, touched his shoulders the way Meg did. It would be different; Dean's caresses would be strong without being forceful. He thought with Dean it would be more like drowning. It would consume him utterly. Not that he knew. He probably never would.  
    He could imagine the kind of lover Dean would be, though- couldn't help but imagine it. He let his thoughts wander to a familiar refrain: Dean's hands, always so ready to steady his elbow or press against the small of his back, moving further to cross a line beyond ambiguity. He felt a heated flush creep up under the collar of his shirt, breath coming a little faster as he imagined Dean's lips following his hands. He would take his time, press kisses into all the secret places of this body, until Castiel was overwhelmed by heat. Dean would smile against his skin, drag his tongue along the curve of his hip, nip at the bone until Castiel arched under him...  
    Alone in the bedroom, Castiel pressed against his stomach. He felt hot, shaky. He dragged his hand along the shirt fabric, catching on his waistband but not pushing further, not yet.  
    He wanted to take his time.  
    His imaginary Dean ran his tongue all the way down, the wet press of his mouth against his hardening cock soaking through the fabric until Dean could taste that he was leaking. Castiel took a long time imagining the details of that moment, the flutter of Dean's tongue muted by cotton, by polyester, by millimeters. The unbearable heat of his breath, moist and so intimate, so close. He was aching, in the fantasy and here in his bedroom, and finally let his hand slide flat along his stomach until it slid down the front of his pants. He could strip; he was alone in a room underground, and he liked the claustrophobic heat of it, the ache in his wrist as he struggled for an angle that would let him grip. Stroking with a tight fist, he brought his hand to his mouth, the one that Dean had held by the stream, had caressed with such certainty. Castiel would try to mimic it as best he could against his cock, drag his tongue along his palm.  
    He imagined that he could taste Dean there, licked along the line Dean had so had so attentively traced with a fingertip. When he wrapped his hand around his cock again it was wet with his saliva and smearing his own slick from sensitive head to base, he could almost imagine it was Dean's mouth. Thrusting hard, hips bucking, he thought about how Dean would swallow him down in perfect acceptance.  
    It was acceptance he didn't deserve. So many things that he'd done, so many betrayals... Dean had reminded him at the creekbed. _No!_ Castiel thought. _Don't-!_ He could let himself forget, just for a moment. It wouldn't be so terrible to imagine a different future for them, where Dean touched him and licked forgiveness into the hollows of his body. If he just focused on how good it felt, the wet slide of his hand, pleasure that could be Dean's mouth moving against him. _Just for a moment and_ \- "Mmm, always wanted to do this, little brother."  
    The voice wasn't Dean's. Castiel let go of himself, scrambled back up against the wall, eyes wide. Lucifer was smirking up at him from the foot of the bed. His cock wilted sticky and uncomfortable against his thigh. He braced his hands against the headboard and gripped tight enough to hurt.  
    "Never thought you'd go for it, such a good little soldier. And now you’re on your back begging to be defiled by one of daddy’s favorite pets."  
    Castiel stood up, sidestepping the wing Lucifer stretched out to trip him with an ugly chuckle that echoed in his head. He tugged his clothes into place, walked to the opposite wall and rested his forehead against it. He squeezed his eyes shut. Lucifer was still smirking when he opened them. One end of the room to the other, pulling at the roots of his hair as he paced. He knew his brother wasn't really there. He could have given a philosophical, psychological, textbook explanation of the guilt, pain and regret that created him. If he were stronger, Castiel could just heal the broken pieces of his mind, the ugly red scars that had crept into him in Sam’s hospital room, mutated into the hideous thing that made his vision fade to gray and his fallen brother press at the edges. But, he wasn't strong enough. Not yet.  
    So instead, he went to find Sam.

 

================================================

  
    Sam had no idea how to categorize Meg in his mind.  
    She promised she’d be back with bags of cash, and it hadn’t even occurred to him where she’d get the initial investment until after she’d already waltzed out the door. Somehow, he didn’t think it was going to be a problem. The problem was, he had plenty of good reasons to hate her, but when he tried to sum them up, it just made him feel tired.     Sam had sobered up after his fight with Dean. His brother had gone to take a nap or aggressively not read a book or otherwise just lock himself in their room. Sam was in the storeroom, moving cans around for lack of anything better to do, when he heard Castiel shuffle into the room.  
    He looked miserable. Sam put down the can of string beans he was holding with a thunk. Hovering in the doorway, Castiel had his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. He let out a too-loud breath and looked unsure about whether or not to come in.  
    “Cas, what is it?”  
    A step over the threshold, then two. When Cas met his eyes he could see the exhausted, haunted look in them.  
    “Come here, sit.” Sam said.  
    Pulling a wooden milk crate away from the wall, Sam upturned it and patted the surface. Castiel sank down, a profile of weariness. Blowing dust off another can and seting it back on the shelf, Sam didn’t even need to ask what happened; he knew that look- hell, he’d seen that look in the mirror. It had Dean was being an unintentionally insensitive jerk written all over it. “Don’t mind Dean,” He said. “He’s just being a dick.”  
    Castiel paused, he hadn’t necessarily intended to talk about that. Mostly, he just wanted to talk and Sam was generally a good listener but, opportunity had presented itself. “He wants to go home,” he said.  
    “Yeah, but more than that I think he wants to feel useful.”  
    Castiel frowned.  
    Dean, his smell, his presence, the thump-thump of his heart speeding up a fraction of a notable percentage and for a second, Castiel was confused. He was blue-eyes willing and on good days, lucid ones, he wanted so many things. If only Dean would-  
    “I don’t think he even knows why he’s mad anymore.” Sam interrupted his thoughts, “Actually, sometimes I think he just can’t stand thinking that he could be pretty happy here.”  
    “Why?”  
    “I don’t know, probably because whenever he is it all goes to hell? I mean, anytime things are smooth sailing for us it ends in disaster, it’s like a curse.” Sam shook his head again, “But look, all I’m saying is don’t take it personally.”  
    “He thinks I’m insane. Castiel said blandly.  
    “Well you’re not.” Sam paused because technically, that was a lie. “Look, I know what it was like after you- when- I just know what it's like. Having all that stuff in your head can get intense."  
    Caught between wanting to say thank-you for fixing him and remembering it was Castiel who'd wrecked everything in the first place, Sam fidgeted. He was sympathetic, but there wasn't much he could say besides sorry man or it serves you right, and he didn't think it did. No one deserved what he’d gone through. Sure, Castiel had fucked up, but that didn't change Sam's opinion of him. He knew what it was like to do the wrong thing for the right reasons and maybe that was why it was easier for him to understand than it was for Dean, because he’d been there.  
    "But he's still angry about it." Castiel said.  
    "Not at you, well, maybe a little. Honestly, I think he's just pissed in general." Sam wasn’t convinced he was qualified to give advice, but it was worth a shot. “Look, I know I’m probably not helping, but you’ve gotta stop worrying about what Dean thinks. If he’s gonna be mad he’s gonna be mad, and you can’t be responsible for that forever. I mean hell, I know what that’s like, feeling like you’re disappointing everyone, trust me, I do- but, you know what?”  
    “What?”  
    “You need to let it go.” It was the hardest lesson Sam had ever learned.  
    Castiel pursed his lips. "But I'm not sure what I should do to...."  
    "Fix things?” Sam asked, “Well, maybe you can’t. I mean, not until you figure out how to deal with this in your own way, anyway.”  
    Castiel narrowed his eyes. “But how?”  
    “I don’t know. I didn’t have to, remember?”  
    “Because I fixed you.”  
    “Yeah,” Sam nodded. “And when it was me, Dean wanted to help but he couldn’t. I knew it was all in my head, but sometimes it felt so real I couldn’t tell the difference and if it scared the crap out of me, it sure as hell scared the crap out of him. But, he’s gonna get over it, man.”  
    “When?” Castiel looked so earnest that Sam looked away.  
    “Well, uh...” When _would_ he get over it, exactly? Dean could hold onto a grudge so long it antiquified. “Okay, well if you want the honest answer: I have no idea. Have you tried talking to him? He might not be happy, but he’ll listen. He listened to me, didn’t want to hear it, but he listened.”  
    “I don’t know how.” In his head, Castiel always said it with his hands.  
    “Well, he’s already pissed, right? So, worst case scenario, he’s still pissed. Just explain it like you explained it to me.” _And hope Dean doesn’t fuck it all up_ , Sam added privately.  
    Castiel nodded, but he already looked defeated and Sam was having trouble wrapping his head around why. Dean having a moment wasn’t the end of the world, Castiel had Meg to take care of him, Sam to talk to, and Dean was civil enough when he was in the house. Watching as Cas's knitted brow deepen, Sam wished he knew how to help, but he didn’t. Guilt he understood, frustration, anger, but Castiel just seemed sad, maybe a little lost. It wasn’t fair to him, really. Dean was difficult enough to figure out if you'd known him for a lifetime, let alone if you'd barged into the middle of the freakshow and tried to make yourself at home.  
    Sam got Dean’s deal, he did, it wasn’t easy to feel like you couldn’t handle things, but he shouldn’t be taking it out on everybody else. God, if Sam counted the number of times he’d been there himself, he’d run out of numbers. Castiel just need to... Sam paused, something niggling at the back of his mind.  
    But suddenly, it all made a too perfect picture.  
    The pining, the restlessness, the strange orbital dynamic that sucked the air out of the room when Dean walked into it and Castiel turned like his whole world had just lit up in white? It was because it did. Sam took a deep, grounding breath. He had to ask, just to be sure. After all, he could be wrong, right? Even with every neon sign flashing disco in his brain, he could still be wrong.  
    "Cas, can I- okay, this is going to sound crazy but, can I ask you something?" He nodded. "Do you- if Dean- uh, okay, whew..." Sam wiped his palms on his dirty jeans. He realized he was going to have to be blunt if he wanted an actual answer. Yeah, best to just spit it out. "Cas, do you care ab- do you, uh... Cas, do you _love_ Dean?"  
    It was a pause-break the length of a universe before quietly, he said: "Yes."  
    “Oh, hell. Cas, look... It’s just, Dean isn’t really the kind of guy who...” And then stupidly, Sam tried to fix things.

 

================================================

  
    Sam should have known that he and Dean were due for another fight.  
    Sitting pensively in the great room three days after Castiel’s confession, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. If Dean found out there was a one-hundred and ten percent chance that he was going to fly off the proverbial handle. Or at least, Sam assumed he would. It wasn’t like Dean was Johnny Bigotry about that sort of thing, but it was Cas, and that made it- well, complicated for starters. After their conversation, Sam had resigned himself to the reality of what knowing meant; that he had to keep his big fat mouth shut, for one.  
    Castiel seemed genuine and despite trying to gently explain that Dean probably didn’t feel the same way, what had really kicked him in the teeth was the way Castiel had nodded and said that it was okay. Not every story has a happy ending, Sam knew that, but there was something karmic about the quiet, defeated way Castiel already knew he wouldn’t get one.  
    So, when Dean breezed into the common space an hour later, Sam was still frowning at nothing.  
    “Who shit in your cornflakes?”  
    “What?” Sam snapped his head up. “Oh. It’s nothing, I’m fine.”  
    “Yeah, ‘cause that doesn’t sound suspect at all.” Dean flopped down in the chair opposite, it was getting too hot for him to stay outside and the fish weren’t biting so finally, he’d given up. “C’mon, what’cha thinkin’ about, broody?”  
    “Nothing.”  
    “Liar.”  
    “Jesus, Dean!” Sam snapped, “It’s nothing, leave it alone!”  
    “Fine.” Tone dropping a temperate million degrees, Dean kicked his feet up. “I just figured we could have an actual conversation, sorry ‘bout that.”  
    “Dean-”  
    “No, forget it. Where’s Cas?”  
    “I don’t know. Upstairs, maybe?”  
    “Figures.”  
    “What?”  
    “Haven’t you noticed that he’s been like that since she flew the coop?” By she he meant Meg, of course. “I’m telling you, I don’t like it. In fact, the whole thing creeps me right the fuck out.”  
    “She hasn’t done anything yet.” Sam said automatically.  
    “Oh, yeah. Forgot, she’s your new best friend.”  
    “You know what, Dean? Shut-up!” Sam was suddenly so tired of the same old song and dance that he couldn’t stand it. “This isn’t about Meg. This is about Ruby and you not letting it go, and you know what? I can’t keep apologizing for the same thing, so fine, you don’t trust me, what else is new. But, while you’ve been busy sulking, Meg’s been taking care of Cas.” Judging from the look on Dean’s face, Sam was pushing the envelope but in for the penny, down for the pound. “So if you want to be pissed, fine. Or, go upstairs and apologize but don’t take things out on me because I’m on your side- I’m always on your side, Dean!”  
    “Apologize for what?” Dean spat.  
    “I don’t know, for being a dickhead since we got here?”  
    “Fuck you, Sam.”  
    “I’m just so tired of fighting with you.” Sam said.  
    “I wasn’t fighting!”  
    “Everything is a fight with you! You’re pissed because we’re here, I get that, fine. But since I’m fresh out of ideas on how to get us back and I didn’t really think us dying was a good plan to start with, we’re not going home. Cas isn’t okay, Meg’s sticking around, we’re having canned pork for the third night in a row because you’re a lousy fisherman and I’m sorry, okay?”  
    Sam stood up, and braced himself for the shot to the jaw but there was nothing forthcoming and after a moment of tense silence, “Man, how long have you been bottling that?”  
    “I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “Probably a while.”  
    “A-grade freak-out, Sammy.” Dean leaned back in his chair, then stared at the ceiling. “I’m just frustrated. I don’t know what we’re doing here, I can’t stand that b-” Sam gave him a look, “-Meg. I don’t know what to do about Cas, I’m trying to help but he’s just… He’s about a million bricks short of a shed and what are we supposed to do here, Sam? We can’t hunt.”  
    “I don’t know. Get a hobby or something. You could help me with some writing, teach Cas how to-” And then Sam suddenly remembered why he’d been alone with his thoughts in the first place. Castiel and Dean! God, now he was going to have to be careful, watch what he said, think before he-  
    “Knock-knock, still in there?”  
    “Uh, teach Cas how to- just, stuff.” Smooth, he chided himself. “But whatever you do, you can’t keep thinking we’re going back. Maybe we are, but probably we’re not, so until then you might as well find something to keep yourself busy or you’re going to be miserable, man.”  
    “Huh.” Dean picked at a hangnail and staring pointedly at the floor he asked the inevitable question, the one that no one had wanted to touch. “So, d’you think we’re winning?”  
    “Back home?” Sam wanted to be optimistic, but he didn’t think so. “Probably.”  
    “Yeah, probably.” Dean said, except he didn’t believe it either.  
    He had never thought they’d win. It was just their job, their responsibility and if he hadn’t figured coming out the other side into the equation, it was because he was ready. You could quit being a hunter but you couldn’t quit being a cosmic force. They were so tied up in everything that there was no getting out. So, maybe the plan had always been to go down swinging. He didn’t want to die as much as he wanted to rest and after a while, they blurred into synonymy. Not suicidal, he reminded himself, just dog-fuck tired. Then, suddenly, when he was ready to take the blow and come what may, that peace of mind was taken away and called a gift.  
    Dean didn’t know what he wanted, or that it was too late for the things he did.  
    “Promise me you’ll try and find something to do?” Sam wheedled, “And also, I get why you’re pissed with Cas, for bringing us here but-”  
    “Without asking, Sam. He just went ahead and did it, and that’s the problem.” Dean made a broad gesture, “Every time he gets it in his head that he can fly solo, he makes a bigger mess and who cleans it up? We do, every single friggin’ time.”  
    “Well, what if there’s no mess?”  
    “We’re stuck in the 1901!”  
    “Yeah, and it could have been worse.” Sam said. “But look, all I was going to say is, try and be a little nicer. He made a mistake, but we both know he was trying to do the right thing.”  
    “That’s not the point, he still did it.”  
    “Dean…”  
    “Fine.” Dean raked his fingers through his hair, “Fine. I’ll… I’ll talk to him, or whatever.”  
    Then and with a bang, Meg was back.

 

================================================

  
    Neatly dressed in a men's suit and tails she had a carpet bag which she slammed onto the table, folded herself into a chair, kicked up her feet and said, "Hey, don't everybody congratulate me at once, but I passed go and there's your two-hundred dollars."  
    Sam's eyes widened. "How much money is in there?"  
    "Enough and plenty more where that came from, you boys are immodern millionaires." She helped herself to a dry-batch biscuit from the table, "So, where's my angel?"  
    Sam didn't miss the way Dean's knuckles whitened on the table's edge, but said nothing.  
    "Upstairs."  
    "His cookies still crumbled?"  
    Finally, Dean had had enough.  
    "Can you stop talking about him like he's nuts?"  
    "Why? You do." Meg fixed him with a level stare, "Oh yeah, that's right. You get special rules that don’t apply to the rest of us, forgot."  
    "Meg-" Sam shook his head from across the table.  
    "Listen, you don't want me getting all the perks how about you drop trou’ and take it like a man. Clarence is crackers, and you can either get with the program or not. What's for dinner?"  
    Split pea and ham, apparently.  
    It didn't take long to heat up now that Dean had a handle on the stove, and within the hour they had all recongregated around the table, Castiel looking too thin without his coat jacket and eating because he wasn't quite angel enough not to. It made Dean uncomfortable, really, so he tried not to watch. Instead, he glared at the back of Meg’s head.  
    "So..." She whistled, "Whatcha gonna buy with your new allowance?"

 

================================================

  
    Dean was going to look ridiculous.  
    It was Sam’s idea, which figured. Meg had come back with money and Castiel was the only one with clothes that could pass in town. But, they couldn’t trust him with the job and Meg had had enough of a time getting their investments sorted in the first place. Sam was ruled out by default, too tall to bother, and so ultimately that left Dean. Castiel was smaller than he was, and his suit would probably fit, but just.  
    Still, he wasn’t convinced that going public was the best plan but he’d been systematically out-voted. Castiel corroborated what Sam had thought from the start, time wasn’t as easily derailed as science-fiction would believe. With this in mind and feeling intensely uncomfortable, Dean hesitated outside of Castiel’s door before finally knocking.  
    “Occupied.”  
    “Meg, is Cas in there?”  
    “He’s indisposed at the moment.”  
    “Funny. I’m coming in.”  
    Castiel was sitting on the bed, carefully organizing a collection of sticks he’d picked up from outside. Not even bothering to ask why, Dean thumbed in the direction of the door. “You, out.”  
    “Who died and made you-”  
    “Before I wring your neck just because it’d be fun.”  
    “Touchy-touchy.” Meg tossed her hair, “You need anything, while I’m gone?”  
    “No, I’m fine.” Castiel smiled and when the door clicked, he turned to Dean. “Attentive, isn’t she?”  
    “Yeah, regular basket full of kittens. Look, I need to borrow your duds.”  
    Castiel blinked.  
    “Your clothes, Cas. I’m going into town, getting a few things for me and Sam.”  
    “Oh,” He nodded. “Of course.”  
    “I’m gonna grab us some-” Dean stopped dead. “What are you doing?”  
    He was undressing.  
    Slowly.  
    Dean watched as Castiel pulled off his tie, slid out of his blazer and after a second’s struggle with his shirt buttons, popped them one by one. God, his skin! Milk-white except where it was sunburnt around his collar. A farmer’s tan because he couldn’t just factory reset whenever he wanted to, couldn’t stop the little bead of sweat pooling at the base of this throat from slithering downward. Ruddy nipples, gorgeous and lickabl and- Dean cringed, what was he even thinking? And...  
    Pants. Oh god, he was going to-! “Cas, stop.”  
    “Dean.” The roll in Castiel’s voice was familiar; just like before. It went straight to Dean’s head, between his legs and his mouth felt suddenly cottony dry. “Are you aroused?”  
    And like a bucket of ice water, it was over.  
    “Just leave them on the bed.” And Dean was gone, door slamming behind him.  
    A few minutes later, Meg filtered back and Castiel was staring forlornly at the wall. He was wearing nothing but his underwear, everything else he owned folded neatly on the pillow beside him.  
    “Hey now, why the long face?”  
    “I’ve upset Dean.”  
    “Well, that’s not hard.” _Bigoted prick_ , Meg thought.  
    “I supposed it stands to reason, I misunderstood. You can’t simply waltz into these situations and of course, I can’t hear his thoughts. It’s all about timing and-”  
    “Tell me you didn’t just play Johnny come-on, Clarence.”  
    Castiel pursed his lips and of course, she already knew the answer. It was a sad sort of circumstance but what did she expect? It had always been Dean from the start. For a brief space in time she thought she could wedge herself in between, but she’d underestimated the depth of his dedication. Dean said jump, Castiel asked how high and now that he was all busted up in the brain, it was naturally one-sided. Never good enough for humanity’s befreckled poster-boy and too blind-sided by unrequited feelings that it could never be her. It figured.  
    “Did you know that for every human on the planet there approximately one million ants?” Castiel drew his knees up and wrapped his sock feet over the edge. “Although, this is likely a relative fact considering the majority of new species haven’t even been discovered yet.”  
    “Life changing.” Meg was already rummaging in her bag, “Here, put something on.”  
    Castiel eyes softened, “Yes, always so attentive.”  
    “Yeah, that’s me, shoe-in for Sainthood.” But Meg smiled anyway because, somehow, wrapped up in her jacket, it felt easier to pretend that he wasn’t someone else’s.

 

================================================

  
    Feeling incredibly awkward and feet pinched in Castiel’s shoes, Dean left the house at half-past four because from what they’d wrangled out of Cas, getting to town was a hike. Fifteen minutes down the road, he realized he could have worn his boots most of the way and switched, but it was too late. He had enough money to cover anything they needed and then some, and Sam had gone over the dos and don’ts. Actually, what he’d said was: okay, have you ever seen any movies set in the early twentieth century? Good. Forget them all.  
    Apparently the historical inaccuracies would just make it worse and Dean was left with be polite, don’t talk more than you have to, and absolutely and under no circumstances do anything dramatic. If he was prompted for I.D. he was a wealthy foreign businessmen who had been robbed during his travels and was waiting for government paperwork. He had purchased private property for his health, lived with his brother, his nephew and his wife. Dean had started to argue at that point, but Sam had cut him off. Any trouble, Sam cautioned, and he was to keep throwing money at the problem until it went away.  
    After the thousandth _I get it, Sam!_ Dean left slamming the door because Meg came down for breakfast and if there was anything he hated more than her existence, it was how utterly and completely devoted Castiel was trailing behind her. It wasn’t that he had any particular cause to be jealous; a few vivid dreams didn’t mean anything and of course he missed the old Cas. He missed having a body that could smite by the half-dozen, drink a liquor store and didn’t understand ninety-percent of whatever he said.  
    At least, that was what he kept telling himself.  
    Every time he woke up sweat-drenched and sticky and with that empty sort of ache it made him wonder if Castiel and Meg had curled up together in the night. Still, Dean reminded himself, it didn’t mean anything. He was just missing a friend and probably regular sex and somewhere tangled up in his subconscious a pearly-sheened cockhead and that deeply muffled _Dean_ was his way of working it out. A really crappy way of working it out, he thought, but whatever.  
    Three hours down the road and worse than Castiel’s too-clean smell bleeding into his skin was the devious little voice in his head asking the obvious question: if it was back then- back where they’d come from- and Cas was still Cas, would he try?  
    And coming over the crest of the hill he hated that he answered yeah, he would.  
    Weighed down by this realization, Dean bought the generics; first-edition Levis all around, white pressed shirts and button-downs made for farmers, decent for grubbing around the house but, that was about it. He got the lay of the land because hunter’s habits die hard, and because he didn’t know what to say, he tipped his hat and said howdy when passersby gave him the eye.  
    Keeping his conversations clipped and literal, he limped through being forgettable and then there was the inevitable stop at the tailor’s. He lied his way through the smalltalk and didn’t even deck the guy for goosing him at the inseam. Knowing that anyone who saw him wouldn’t- or rather shouldn’t- remember him was a strange feeling. For someone whose battle cry was a slick pick-up line and a cocksure smile, anonymity was about as left-field crazy as it came.  
    For the first time, Dean Winchester wasn’t anybody special and hitching a ride on a farm cart part-way home, he stared at the passing dirt and wondered why that didn’t bother him as much as it probably should.  
    When the delivery arrived a week later, Sam started doing the shopping instead.

 

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**Part IV**

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    Castiel woke up feeling good.  
    That morning, there was a thrum of grace pulsing in his veins and his head felt remarkably clear. With purpose, he rolled out of bed. Rather than wash and dress out of habit, he snapped his fingers and was neatly pressed. Not enough power for anything but parlour tricks, but remembering that he was an angel after weeks of being so human it ached, he smiled. There were so many things he’d meant to do but couldn’t, and without Sam’s personified psychosis hissing tongues in his ear, he was going to do all of them.  
    It was past sunrise when he padded downstairs. Dean had fallen asleep on a cot near the door and when Castiel snapped his fingers the second time, the entire room was bathed in too-bright light.  
    Dean fell out of bed reeling. Covering his eyes he reached for his knife and temporarily blinded, banged his knee on the table. Scrambling upright and after a few tense seconds he blinked away the yellow spots to see Castiel, smiling.  
    “Cas- what- how did you-” And then Dean looked up.  
    A skylight! The whole damn time they’d been lurking in the dark and scraping along by lamplight and there was a steal roll-cover on the ceiling they hadn’t been able to see! Knee throbbing, Dean didn’t bother to ask why Castiel hadn’t just told them it was there in the first place. “So, what, you all juiced up now?”  
    “No, but I suppose more relatively, yes.” Castiel’s expression fell, “I can’t take us back.”  
    “Figured that was a long-shot.” Dean sighed.  
    “Here, allow me-”  
    And Castiel knelt down to where Dean’s scraped leg was trickling. It was barely a cut, but he could make it better, fix it, do a little good. Gently, reverently, his hand followed the line of Dean’s leg from calve to joint. If he tried to pretend there wasn’t an underlying sexualisation to it, he’d be lying. Without denim in between it would be hot leg to cool hand, darkly haired gorgeousness. In different circumstance, a different situation, what would it feel like to crawl higher, stretch-dry lips cracking because Dean would want his mouth, be cockheavy and full. He knew the method if not the motion, but none of that mattered.  
    Sam had explained it quite clearly. Dean wouldn’t ever want him because Dean would never want his body. Sam said he was sorry, when he explained it. It was just that Dean wasn’t that kind of man and he could probably appreciate Castiel’s feelings, someday, but he wouldn’t return them. Dean was just built differently. Straight, he said. The vessel that contained him was the wrong shape and so, it would never be about what he was beneath that skin.  
    Now, whenever he imagined the way Dean might kiss him all he could hear was: He’ll never feel like that, Cas. It’s not you, it’s just Dean. I’m so sorry.  
    “Cas...”  
    Castiel traced his finger through the blood and it was gone, skin left smooth and unbroken. Dean’s heart was hammering in his chest, and Castiel staring up at him self-satisfiedly. It felt good to be useful, to be an angel, to not feel as foggy. As clear and cut as Dean’s jaw line, as sensical as the way the stubble grain drew a map to his throat. Maybe they swayed a little closer because gravity was intramedial and maybe Dean thought about fisting Cas's hair, dragging him upright, kissing him until he was lucid and normal and everything memorable in between.  
    “Holy hell! Is that a skylight?” And just like that, the spell was broken.  
    Sam was padding downstairs and Dean took a step back, Castiel was on his feet and it was almost like nothing was amiss. But still, he’d heard Dean’s heartbeat, felt the elevation in his pulse, want radiating from the core of him. Sexually, carnally and Dean had wanted him! Maybe, he thought, buried in between the story of them both, between sheets and shards of I’m sorry’s, there was just Dean. Sex, sweat, please, yes, and I need. Hope, like a gunshot. Could Sam have been wrong?  
    “It is,” Castiel said. “And I’ve replaced the lights inadvertently destroyed when we arrived.”  
    “We have electricity?” Sam blinked up at the sun, prattling on excitedly. “I guess, yeah... The light bulb was invented- yeah, of course! Wow, Dean, take a look at this place!”  
    Sam sounded genuinely interested in all the things they couldn’t see by lamplight but Dean didn’t want to take a better look. Instead, he stared at Castiel’s serene, self-satisfied smile and Sam’s ear-split grin, shifted uncomfortably because he was rock-hard in his jeans and grabbed his jacket. “Yeah, skylight. Awesome.”  
    “Where are you going?”  
    “Out.”  
    “Dean, what’s your-” And Sam didn’t even manage ‘problem’ before the door slammed shut.  
    But, and showing remarkably self-control, Sam didn’t yell after him and instead, grinned up and ceiling and then at Castiel who seemed chesirely pleased with himself. Dean was probably just frustrated that the magic ended with home-improvements and not a one-way ticket to back to- Sam’s brain stalled, home? It didn’t even feel like home anymore. It was more like some goddamn nightmare that they had finally escaped.  
    Sam scratched his elbow and grabbed a fresh sheet of paper. He had more work to do and true to her word, Meg had managed to keep him in materials. History might be a fickle friend, but he was constantly inundated with grubby envelopes marked S. W. and for once in his life, everything Sam knew seemed to have a logical place, belonged. Thumbing through a diary that had been penned nearly two centuries earlier, Sam wondered if everything he learned had been handed down, if there was some kind of order or society that could have kept it safe, how many hunters would still be alive in his old future? The truth was, knowledge killed monsters. Weapons were just the means, but the method? That was knowing how.

 

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    Dean wanted to say that he didn’t know why he left, but he knew exactly why. Heart hammering in his chest he made his way around back the compound before leaning up against the craggy brick. Deep breath, calm down, don’t think about Cas sucking you dry. Worse, what riled him up wasn’t the sexualism so much as that it would be _Cas_ and his why-so-small shoulders, gruff pleases and cues. It wasn’t even about getting laid- god, he had a left hand built expressly for the job. Still, imagining the way Castiel would move when he was touched, that he would stare up at Dean- stare through him- it was too much! Clarity was calamity and what they would lack in know-how they would make up in enthusiasm.  
    Or, would have, if Cas was- if he could- damnit!  
    Dean was frustrated and honestly, he felt robbed. Erection ignored and flagging, he got it, he did. Sam was book-nosed and perfectly happy to lounge in the past, but him? He was stuck in history too, but not the same one. He was stuck in a back alley, a warehouse, a green room, in Bobby’s dirt-dust living room remembering the crackle of an angel strong enough to snap him in two and patient enough to never do it. He was stuck in the house he never owned and a car he wanted to drive and a memory of a man whose daily dilemma wasn’t wax beans or peas.  
    Blood, glory, and if the Castiel from a dozen memories before shoved him against a wall, pried into his mouth with an insistent tongue, god… He’d give up, give in, take it all in stride.  
    Ladyluck green eyes, pretty-bow mouth. Being a hunter was a mask of masculinity and sure, he’d jacked it to abs and asses, that pretty, twinkie little thing on page twelve. But you work a job, you go into a bar, you bang something busty and blonde because cleaning the pipes keeps you sharp. In an every-damn-thing eat dog world, stereotypes kept you safe. Dean wasn’t straight because he couldn’t take the swing-hit, but because he had spent a lifetime being a hunter before a man, a masochist before things got sentimental and when he thought he’d finally gotten it all down to a science, then there was Cas.  
    Waltzed into his life, blew it all apart; power and electricity and God’s great gray wrath all wrapped up in polyester. Castiel had made him want things he’d learned not to want, made him want to be something he didn’t know how to be. Turned everything upside down and sideways and expected him to keep up, tow the line, meet the bar. Then what? Then he’d gone to Lisa’s to play house because Sam wanted him to live a good long life and if he closed his eyes when they made love and missed a mouth he’d never had the chance to kiss, no one needed to know.  
    Somewhere between then and current, it had all gone to hell.  
    Dean wasn’t happy because he’d been given a second chance altogether too late. No monsters, no imminent death, no chance to go out in a blaze of glory because why not? Cocksoft and dejected, Dean let the sun warm him and the yellow of its glow eat away his thoughts. He wasn’t happy because some other place and time, maybe he could have been. But, Castiel still needed a shoulder to lean on and he was just going to have to try.

 

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    Days bled into a weeks and as promised, Dean was making an effort.  
    At breakfast he was conscious of Castiel’s space, sat a little closer while they ate, tried to make himself into a physical anchor whenever Meg was gone or whenever he thought he should. He was trying, he really was, but that creekside clarity eluded him. If anything, it seemed like Castiel was patiently tolerating him but because he didn’t know what else to do, he kept doing it.  
    After awhile, it got easier to separate want and need. Dean could touch Castiel’s shoulder or the back of his hand and remind himself that it was just because someone needed to do it. No more sudden intakes of breath, no more animated talks, just a quietly awkward closeness that was the best they were going to get. Worse, better? He didn’t even know anymore.  
    Meg came home after another errand on a rainy Monday and bitterly, Dean watched the way Castiel lit up. Buried in his breakfast Sam didn’t seem to notice, but before Meg loaded up her own plate, she passed one to Castiel, buttered his toast. He hadn’t needed to eat for a few days and Dean had taken it for granted that maybe he still wanted to. A happy sigh- god, Cas loved butter and he loved jam and porridge and those soggy, unnamed cream-of-grits they bought by the kilo bag, didn’t he?  
    Dean hadn’t bothered to make him a plate, hadn’t even asked.  
    “So, did you take care of everything?” Sam asked.  
    “We’re peaches.”  
    “So,” Sam said thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking, are you going to have to take a trip back to the future to- uh, well, be there?” Truth be told, he’d been thinking about it for a while. He hadn’t mentioned anything but, if they had snapped out of their own time loops, Dean, Cas and him, but Meg hadn’t… It stood to reason to complete the cycle of events she would have to return to the future. Which meant in their future, Meg had already been to their current past, had known what was going to happen. But then, why did she…? Sam pinched the bridge of his nose.  
    “Not sure,” Meg shoved a sausage in her mouth. Honestly, she’d sort of assumed. “Probably.”  
    “Hmm.” They’d work it out later. Already, Sam could sense Dean glowering from the opposite side of the table. He didn’t like talking time.  
    After a pause she turned to Castiel, “So, get up to anything interesting while I was gone?” Watching, Dean couldn’t figure out the look that flickered between Meg’s smug smirk and Castiel’s head-shake, but he didn’t like it.  
    “No.”  
    “Pity.”  
    She didn’t even look sorry, arm draped lazily over Castiel’s shoulder, fingers twining in his hair. Knees touching, the shake of her head, the way his neck tilted because she was rubbing his earlobe and Dean was so suddenly furious he couldn’t swallow. Coughing, he drank down a mouthful of masticated eggs with his coffee and then, it was like staring down at an out of body experience. His mouth was moving, and he just couldn’t shut up.  
    “Can you stop with all the-” He made a broad gesture, “-goddamn creepy touching?  
    Sam snapped his head ‘round, staring at Dean glaring at Meg who raised an eyebrow. “You got something to say, big boy, or you just gonna figuratively piss all over the table?”  
    “Dean-”  
    “Shut-up, Sam.” Heat was rising up Dean’s neck, “Take it upstairs if you can’t keep your hands to yourself, but I don’t need the dinner show.”  
    “Hear that, Clarence? That’s like his blessing.”  
    Castiel looked miserable and spitefully, Dean thought that maybe it served him right. Yeah, maybe he wasn’t good at comforting but he wasn’t hellfire in a skinsuit, either. It shouldn’t be normal that Sam didn’t notice them getting handsy or that he was okay with that, but if he wanted to touch Cas is felt like stealing. Sex, if that was the magic ingredient fine, but he wouldn’t take advantage of Cas that way. So there it was, that’s what morals got him. Castiel might as well be a fucking stranger and for some reason, Meg still got all the perks.  
    “You know, if you want to get frisky, he’d probably go for it. Ever seen him all sweaty, Dean? Oh, right. Never mind.”  
    Sam blanched. Whatever was about to happen, it wouldn’t be pretty.  
    “Fuck off, Meg.”  
    “What, don’t have the knockers?”  
    “Please don’t f-” Castiel was cut off as Dean pushed back from the table.  
    “Don’t,” Sam put his fork down. “You’ve been stuck inside for a couple days with the rain, you’re just-”  
    “Just _what_ , Sam?”  
    “Hey now,” Meg swung around to the other side of the table, leaning back against the wood. “Just because I can get it up for him doesn’t mean-” _SLAM!_  
Dean didn’t think, didn’t blink, he just smashed his fist down, shattering his breakfast plate and sending bits flying. Instantly, everybody was on their feet and Dean could barely hear Sam’s shouting over the sound of his own heartbeat, rage hot on cheeks. It had just happened so fast!  
    “Jesus, Dean. Are you crazy!?” But Dean wasn’t listening.  
    He was already out the door, into the rain, and it didn’t matter that he was soaked to the skin in seconds because what had he done? No wonder Castiel didn’t trust him, no wonder he didn’t-  
    “Dean?” It was Castiel.  
    “What are you doing out here?” _You should be inside_ , he thought. _Cleaning up my mess._  
    “Why?”  
    “I don’t know.”  
    “Dean.” The worst part was how lucid he seemed, how serious.  
    “I don’t know! I just, I don’t know.” Dean was dragging his fingers through his hair and Castiel was just as wet as he was, staring up at him soulful and blue. “I don’t know.”  
    “You were angry.”  
    “Yeah- yeah, I was.” He took a deep breath, “Look, whatever you guys have going on, I’m not happy for you. I get it, I’ll learn to deal with it, but she shouldn’t have- you don’t- she took advantage of the situation, okay?” Maybe what upset him most was that if he didn’t care so damn much, he could have been all twined up in Castiel’s bedspace from the get-go.  
    Castiel stepped closer, a toast crumb in the corner of his mouth and water pouring down his cheeks. Slowly, Castiel’s hand was sliding into his and for some reason, he let it. “I’m not insane.”  
    “Yeah you are.” Lightning ripped through the sky and how- why-! Dean’s mouth was crashing against Castiel’s and he heard the whimper but he wanted it, just once, just one kiss, just something to say he didn’t say goodbye never knowing what it felt like. Warm and wet and a tangle of tongues, hands fisted in the starchy fabric of his shirt. Castiel was pressed against the brick and his hands were wound around Dean’s waist, his arms, raking over his chest because it was his, his width and breadth and Deanish smell. He had imagined it a hundred thousand times before, but never as perfectly as in the eye of a storm.  
    If he wanted to say please it was a stifled moan mouth to mouth, stolen moments of hot air passing in between them. Nothing felt as good, had ever- would- because kissing Meg was comfortable sin, but kissing Dean was what angels fell for. Castiel’s whole body was electrically charged and he wanted it bad, wanted it deep, wanted brick-rash up his side because tongue-fucked and finally, everything was as clear and cut as glass.  
    “Anything-” He gravelled, “Any way you want me, I’ll…” But, then he was confused.  
    Dean had stiffened in his arms, was pulling away, looked sweaty and wrecked and broken, and he steadied himself, pushed himself away. “God, Cas- I’m sorry, I’m-”  
    Castiel blinked. It wasn’t supposed to end that way! He’d waited so long, he’d been so lost and now he was angry, maybe hurt, maybe everything in between but already carved property-of, what he finally whispered was, “Why don’t you want me?”  
    Time stopped or maybe, Dean just stopped breathing. “What?”  
    “Is it this time, this body?” Castiel’s eyes raked downward, couldn’t miss the rock hard outline of Dean’s swollen prick, wanted reasons and answers and apologies. “Am I…?”  
    What could he say, why explain it? Dean was amouristic stardust singing through creation, atoms and molecules, forever distracting freckles and he wanted, he did. Castiel had run from a future that was guaranteed, immanent death and all for the desperate idea of some night they might share. Kisses by the thousands, anything Dean wanted- carnally, bodily, he could take, so why would he apologize like it was a mistake! It wasn’t, it was meant to be.  
    Dean wanted to swallow his tongue, “Because you’re not-”  
    “How you remember wanting me.” Deadpan, but it was true, wasn’t it?  
    But Castiel was sucking on Dean’s bottom lip, sliding close, worming his way between all the good reasons to not do everything Dean wanted to do. Castiel knew he was leaving finger-bruises on Dean’s arms, and he didn’t care. Internally, Dean was struggling. He was supposed to want Castiel at his best if he did at all- angel, avenger, soldier! No patch on what he was, no disrespect, but Dean had never kissed that other Cas and cold seeping into his bones, rain pounding down around the song of them both, that was it.  
    He’d fallen in love with the wrong one, and he couldn’t remember how to care.

 

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    In the time it took for Dean to go outside and Castiel to follow, Meg realized just how much everything had changed. Months ago, Castiel wouldn’t have followed him. He would have stood around looking lost and forlorn and then, he would have tucked himself quietly against her side. She would have said something snarky but he would still curl in closer and she would feel that starburst in her chest. It was a bust, now. All over, anything that could or should have been and she hated that she couldn’t even shake the optimism.  
    “You okay?” Sam asked.  
    Was she okay? That was rich. She was hellspawn, she smote and wrought and wrecked and somewhere in the middle of a newer and arguably more comfortable sense of self, she’d lost sight of who she was- or at least, what. She was supposed to be evil incarnate and with an ever-present purpose. A demon! And then, there was the icing on the cake. Sam fucking Winchester, concerned.  
    “Takes more than a temper tantrum over my oatmeal to get me going. Besides,” She added icily, “Your brother? Glorified attack dog, never been well-trained.”  
    “You just seemed a little...” Sam pursed his lips, should he say it? Probably not, but he decided to anyway. “Upset. About, y’know, Cas.”  
    “Don’t need the pity-party, but A-one for effort. Keep up the good Samaritan shtick, and whatever else you feel-good Boy Scouts do.” Yeah, that was better. Nonchalant, she thought. Mean.  
    “It’s not a-” Sam wasn’t even sure why he was trying to be nice, it was Meg! Still, after everything, it felt like he should. “Fine, whatever you want to call it. We’re only having this conversation because I’m worried about him, okay? I shouldn’t tell you, but-“  
    “Spare me the details. I know about Dean.”  
    He blinked. “You do?”  
    “Wouldn’t take a rocket scientist.”  
    “Well then, if you-”  
    “What, I swoop in, play the rebound? Shove it, Disney.” Meg stole Dean’s orange juice just for the petty satisfaction and draining it added, “Things like us, like me- him, we don’t get a happy ending, that’s pretty much written into the contract. Sucks to be him, tough luck, boo-hoo.”  
    Meg swallowed. It was a goddamn hard lie to tell, because she did care.  
    “That’s not f-”  
    “Fair? Yeah, cry me a river.” Meg stood up, “Let me tell you something about humanity. That’s where you find your big mess of touchy-feelies, but not up there,” She pointed upward, “And not in the hole. The closest thing you get is knowing what you are to one another is a decent replacement and looks like my temporary pass is up. No biggie, I’ll live.”  
    “Yeah, well, it’s not Cas's fault that Dean is-” Sam hesitated, “Dean.”  
    “Looks like as of now, that’s not my problem.”  
    “If you would just talk to him.” Sam was on his feet. “Look, Dean’s not gonna come around and where does that leave him? Cas's confused and like it or not, I don’t think you’re here because of us. He needs somebody, at least.”  
    Sam didn’t even know why he was trying to fix things, but for whatever it was worth, Meg seemed genuinely invested or at least insofar as Cas was concerned.  
    Meg turned on her heels, temper hot. “Yeah, sure. Thanks for the feel-good talk, let’s do this again never.”  
    “Wait-!” But, she was already gone.  
    Halfway up the stairs, Meg snorted. Was that what Sam had told him, that Dean would never feel that way? Naive sonofabitch. Doing his best to help and missing the inevitable big picture. Suddenly and selfishly, she wondered if that meant she could wedge herself back in, butter Castiel up and be the devil on his shoulder. Silk and sin, he might not love you, blue eyes, but I could. No, Sam didn’t get it. Dean did love him, in that backwards, self-flagellating way of his, and if Castiel figured it out, it would be game over.  
    So what was she supposed to do, try? Maybe.

 

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    When Castiel went back inside, he was alone.  
    He’d wanted Dean to come with him, but he wasn’t ready, was skittish and gunshy and ready to bolt. Resignedly and with the taste of that ruinous kiss, Castiel left him in the rain. Sam was doing the breakfast dishes when he slipped through the door and slinking guiltily upstairs to where Meg was waiting for him, he was holding onto something new and entirely precious; the future.  
    When the sound of Cas's footsteps reached the landing, Meg was out the door and sinking into his personal space. A livewire, hot and tight and in a female body he could enjoy with the subface of a creature he could understand. Just a kiss, some sloppy wet declaration because then at least she would know without ever having to come out and say it. Castiel’s back was to the wall, Meg tangled in the damp of his coat. She wanted him and she wasn’t even sure why. Just an angel who got it wrong and a devil who got it right and together, a tragic kind of spark. Fuck Sam, and Dean, and the universe because who decided that only heroes get the happy ending.  
    It wasn't a good kiss, was barely a tangle of tongues before Castiel pulled back looking apologetic and uncomfortable. But by that point it was too late, Dean had seen enough.  
    Out of earshot, Dean was flooded with a mix of emotions he didn't want and wasn't sure how to deal with. He had come inside after a few minutes, because he wanted it- Cas- something. But when he climbed those stairs it was under the assumption that he and Castiel would fall into one another, touch, taste, take and everything would make a concrete kind of sense, until it didn’t. Like a montage in his head and a punch to the gut; Cas's useless sense of humor, his broken side-smile. Minutes earlier Castiel had been pressed up against the wall and begging him for something- anything, so long as he kept touching and then, Dean realized why. For a split second in time he’d thought Castiel knew what he was asking for, but he didn’t, did he?  
    It didn’t matter if it was Dean or Meg, hell, even Sam because it wasn’t about wanting or needing, was it? No, it was about a sense of grounding. He had been so fucking stupid!  
    "Hey,” Sam caught him on the way through the kitchen to the door, elbows soapy and a dish towel slung over his shoulder. "Where you headed now?”  
    "I don’t know.”  
    "Okay...?"  
    "Just- somewhere. I don’t know. Drop it, Sammy.”  
    "Uh, okay...?" But Sam knew when to leave it alone.

 

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    Back in the upstairs hallway and gently but no less insistently, Castiel carefully untangled himself and took a step backward. Dean had touched him, wanted him, thought about taking and having and being for, and as comforting as the familiarity of Meg’s mouth was, things had changed. He felt the difference as an emotive wave, felt it burrowing nervously in his gut and he wanted desperately to do the right thing. This time, that meant saying no.  
    "Meg I appreciate your-”  
    “Don’t.” She said, “I know, not him. S’okay, girl’s gotta dream, right?” Castiel looked conflicted and Meg smoothed down his coat and maybe there was a humanized part of her that had to remember not to let it hurt that bad. "Hey, c'mon, buck up. I'm not holding it against you, we’re no Romeo and Juliet and hell, I still need me my morning dose of crazy.”  
    Castiel didn’t miss the way she flinched when he touched her cheek.  
    "Don't go getting all sweet on me now." She brushed an invisible hair off of his shoulder, "He doesn’t deserve it, but, I kinda hope for your sake he’s come ‘round.”  
    “Thank-you.”  
    “Yeah, yeah…” But as Meg turned he heard a quiet _you’re welcome_ from under her breath and he was sorry. She was what she was, a demon and yet...  
    There had always been a shine of goodness to that soul.

 

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    Four hours later and dinner in the oven, Dean still wasn’t back, Castiel was sitting outside near the creek bed and Sam was mixing himself a drink. There was something about Scotch that always seemed gentlemanly and poured into good crystal, it felt right. He took a deep breath and hearing the too-soft squeak of a step on the landing, he didn't need to turn around to know who it was. He wasn’t angry, but he would also never admit he found Meg’s company familiar.  
    Without looking up he asked, "Hey, you want?"  
    "Get’s me all bothered when you use your manners."  
    "Funny." Sam held up a glass, "Ice?"  
    "Yeah, why not."  
    "I'm gonna sit outside for a bit." He said, but took the bottle.  
    It was as close as Sam would get to an outright invite, open-ended enough for a yes, no or a maybe. It wasn’t a friendship or maybe it was, but minutes later they found themselves on the sun-warmed concrete watching the daylight sink to eve.  
    "So..." Sam didn't look at her, but he already knew. "About Cas..."  
    “I talked to him.” And honestly, she wasn’t sure why she told him the truth.  
    “Did you...?”  
    "Make a fool of myself? Yeah, did that in spades."  
    Sam stared into his drink. It was a long shot, but he’d hoped Castiel would take her up on the offer. He should have know it would be that easy; he’d dragged Dean from hell, fought for him, fallen for him in a thousand different ways but still, Sam felt a little guilty. It wasn’t Cas's fault and it wasn’t Meg’s and maybe what he felt guilty about was that he’d known Castiel would say no. She’d asked because he’d pushed it, he knew that.  
    "Least you said something.” He said.  
    "Shouldn't have bothered." Meg knocked back an indelicate swig and Sam stared at the ice crackling in his glass, said nothing as he poured her another.  
    "Where is he, anyway?” Meg asked.  
    "Getting lost, probably." Sam shrugged and instinctively knew who she meant. "Seemed pissed, left.”  
    They were quiet for a while, just staring at the sky as the blue became a pinky-gold. As evening's early navy plumed from underneath the cloud cover, Meg finished her drink and set down her glass. “Y’know I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s with the Johnny Nice-Guy routine?” She asked. “I don’t like you, you don’t like me. Not really hair-braiding besties, if you catch my drift.”  
    "I don't know." Sam didn't know, really. It just seemed like nothing was as black and white as he remembered. Meg was evil, except for all the times she wasn't. Sometimes when he forgot to remember why not, it seemed like they were friends. "Doesn't seem worth it to keep up appearances, that's all."  
    That was it, wasn’t it?  
    No war, no good and bad things or people. No, nothing but well-aged Scotch, wide open spaces and a lifetime that was a little bit easier to swallow than do or die because that’s all you’re good for. It seemed stupid to add up old grievances. He supposed that forgiveness was a kind of tragic blur that time couldn’t touch, a second chance. All that separates grey from silver was who’s willing to polish out the shine, right? So, if Sam stood up, brushed off and offered a hand and the rainclouds rolled it? It was because what they had was nothing but the temperance of a grudge.

 

================================================

  
    Castiel barely felt the chill of the rain as it pounded down around him. After the first hour, he realized Dean wasn’t coming to find him. Convinced as he was that he hadn’t misinterpreted the signs or signals, Castiel stared pensively into the creek and watched the water swill the surface.  
    What was he supposed to do? Meg had been a familiar refuge and he had burned that bridge for Dean. Now, there was no one. Creeping along the edges of his consciousness was that rattling sense of second-self, the voice in his head that slipped in when he lost focus.  
    “Well, well. Little brother makes a mess again.” A forked tongue tickled his ear, “What, did you think he’d give it all up for you? Apes, Castiel. That’s all they are.”  
    Castiel took a deep breath and tried to push the voice to the corner of his mind. He was tired of listening to the echo, it wasn’t real. It was symptomatic, it was stress and insecurities and self-doubt all creeping up and picking at him like a scab.  
    “You can’t ignore me forever. I know you, know you thought he’d say it.”  
    No, please... No. He couldn’t hold on, didn’t want to hear anything more!  
    “That he’d tell you he cared. Cute, really.”  
    Castiel didn’t realize his nose was bleeding. He clamped both hands over his ears to stop the ringing, but no matter how much it hurt, he wasn’t going to listen. It wasn’t real- it wasn’t even Lucifer, just the shadow of something Sam had created in his head.  
    “Did you think he’d say I love you?”  
    Pick. Pick. Pick. Down to the bone from the nailbed, scritching in his brain. Castiel curled tightly into himself, he hadn’t had an episode in weeks and it was like the slow-motion impact of a gunshot to the brain. Everything he’d held back was crashing down around him, drowning him. Meg wasn’t going to find him, Dean wouldn’t look. He was alone, so utterly and completely alone, and he could never make himself small enough to shoulder the unbearable weight of knowing.  
    Except, Dean did look and when he found him, Castiel was half-drowned and covered in mud.

 

================================================

  
    "What the hell were you thinking?"  
    It was the first thing that filtered through the dull pounding in Castiel’s skull. He felt cold and wet and he was loosely aware of the fact that Dean was hauling him upright, but was confused by the mix of reactions. He shouldn’t be cold, that was his first clear thought. He was getting better, his powers had been steadily trickling back. He was an invulnerable thing, so why was he so wet and why did he feel the seep of it in his bones? Pain was supposed to be an optional sensation and he wasn’t supposed to feel so small wrapped up in Dean’s arms, but he did.  
    "Jesus Christ, why the hell were you out here by yourself, where the hell was Meg? You could have drowned!"  
    Dean was angry but Castiel wasn't entirely sure why. He tried to explain, slurred something that sounded like _I was waiting for you_ in his head but came out a low, miserable moan. His lips felt fat and his vision cloudy, but already he could feel Dean’s warmth bleeding into him, correcting the damage done. He had lost control but it was temporary, he just needed to refocus, reset and go forward.  
    Staggering under Castiel’s dead weight, Dean could feel white-hot rage rising up in his cheeks. When he had seen them in the hallway, the tilt of Meg’s head and the flutter of her eye lashes had hit him like a freight train. When their mouths collided- hers, Castiel’s- it had burnt into the forefront of his mind. Why hadn't she been with him, after that? Probably used him for a rub-off and then let him wander. Something inside Dean snapped. She should know better! She should have-! Except, he wasn’t even angry as Meg. He was angry at himself. Castiel had needed somebody and he'd left it up to anybody else because he couldn’t keep his shit together.  
    Hauling Castiel up the embankment was easier said than done, he was shaky and the grass was slippery wet. When they made it to the bunker Castiel could already stand. Pushing through the door, Dean asked: “Can you walk?”  
    “Yes.”  
    “Then go upstairs, dry off and stay there.”He pointed, “Now would be good.”  
    Sam who had been in the kitchen gave him a pinched look as Castiel started to climb the stairs, shoulders slumped. He was defeated and the last thing he wanted on top of everything else was Dean mad at him, it was easier just to do what he was told.  
    "Jesus, Dean!” Sam said accustorily, “He's not a child!"  
    "Well then he should stop fucking acting like one." Dean whirled around, "Do you know where the hell I found him? Having a dip in the goddamn creek!"  
    "Why was he-"  
    "Don't know, don't care. Where the hell is Meg?"  
    "What?" Sam stared at him blankly.  
    "I want to know why the hell she let him out there in the first place!"  
    On cue, Meg appeared from the storeroom, dropped dinner on the table and crossed her arm. "I'm not his keeper, he wanted to go out and I didn’t stop him, sue me."  
    "Yeah, just let him waltz out the front door and take a swim. Nice, real nice."  
    "Dean, will you stop?" Sam was tired of the constant drama, what the hell did Dean want? No matter the outcome, he always had an issue. "Cas is fine. It was just a little water he'll-"  
    "He's barely a friggin' angel anymore, he gets cold, and wet and he sleeps and you can't just-"  
    "Well, if you were so worried about him, where were you?" Meg spat.  
    Sam bit his tongue because in a split second, things could get very, very ugly.  
    "Yeah, you heard me. Where were you? Oh, right. Out feeling sorry for yourself, maybe figuring out inventive new ways to be a grade-A dickhead." She snarled, "So before you blame the demon in the room just because you can’t figure out if it’s time to shit or get off the pot-"  
    "Fuck-you, Meg! You don't just get to-"  
    "He was looking for you, jackass!"  
    Dean's thought process derailed at speed and it felt like an explosion, "What?"  
    Meg drew herself up, “He was out squatting in the rain because for some stupid reason after all the apeheadedshit you've pulled, he still thought you'd actually come looking for him."  
    Sam was staring from Dean to Meg and back again, too aware of the situation and not sure if he should say anything or stick quietly to the background of whatever was about to go down.  
    "What the hell is your angle?"  
    "What?"  
    "You're all over him. Saw you in the hallway showing him the ropes and what is it to you, a game?"  
    "You really are that stupid, aren't you?"  
    "What the hell are you talking about?" Dean snapped.  
    "You poor, dumb sonofabitch." She snorted.  
    "Meg-" Sam said warningly. God, if she told him now it was going to make things worse. It was bad enough the way Dean acted, let alone how he'd be around Castiel when he found out how he felt! Besides that, it wasn’t her place to tell him about-  
    "Stupid angel’s in love with you. Always was, always will be.”  
    Sam sucked in a breath and immediately, he tried to backtrack. "Dean- look, it's not a big deal, he knows it won't pan out. I talked to him, he won't try anything and..."  
    Dean wasn’t listening.  
    There was no fucking way that karma was that much of a bitch, but standing frozen in Meg’s acidic glare and tuning out Sam’s desperate attempt at smoothing things over, he knew. So what then, it was all his fault, the whole thing? Castiel dragging them through time, planting them in a place they could grow old together, his power-drain, all of it. Every single little exchange, the way he tried so hard to do right by Dean, win him over, earn back his trust. Those big, stupidly sad eyes looking up at him... Castiel wasn’t human enough to explain and Dean had been too stubborn to listen. Vaguely he was aware of the sound of Sam still trying to explain away the big gay crisis he wasn’t going to have because he loved that fucking pain-in-the-ass, deadpan idiot and that sudden realization? Yeah, it scared the shit out of him.  
    “Shut-up, Sam.”  
    “I don’t want you to treat him differently just because-”  
    “Seriously, shut-up.” Dean wasn’t yelling because he wasn’t angry, just dozy and dumb as it all hit home. God, he hadn’t just stirred the pot, he’d cooked up a holy homemade batch of Chef’s special fuck-up. It had been an emotionally clusterfuck from the start.     “I’ll just... It’s fine. I’ll talk to him.”  
    Sam chewed his bottom lip, “It’s not his fault, Dean.”  
    “Man, stop.” He looked at Sam, “We’re just going to talk, okay? I just need- we’re just going to talk, that’s all.” Dean couldn’t hear the rain patter on the roof anymore and that made things easier, “Look, the rain is letting up- just, take her with you, whatever. Just go.”  
    “Who says you get to call the sh-” Meg felt a tug on her sleeve and turned. Sam was shaking his head warningly and judging by the expression on Dean’s face, it was for the best. Caught in the moment Sam didn’t look convinced that it was a good idea to leave and Meg seemed to be waiting on his cue before she decided to duck out or make a stand. Standing his ground Dean didn’t say anything forthcoming and when Sam nodded, it meant the world.  
    How long it had been since they just outright trusted one another? Dean didn’t know, but it had been a while. Shit was fucked up and not just with Cas, but one problem at a time.  
    Gently, Sam asked: “How much time do you need?”

 

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    Castiel heard the whole conversation.  
    Things had gotten so complicated! He was an angel, a feared and fearsome warrior and somehow the humanity that had been steadily creeping inside and taking over, it had made him someone or something else. A conflict of identity, perhaps, augmented by not knowing which one he would rather be.  
    Already, Castiel could hear Dean on the landing. He could feel Sam’s inner conflict, Meg’s frothing disappointment, but Dean was the same unreadable storm of emotion he always was. That was part of the reason it was so difficult to navigate around him, there was no beginning or end to Dean’s hurt or his rage, but there was also no depth to his capacity to feel. His heart wasn’t on his sleeve, it was tattooed onto the airspace around him and all knotted up in the constant mass of here and there was that single sliver of confirmation Castiel could never find.  
    Truthfully, he didn’t know how Dean felt about him. Love, hate, it didn’t seem to have a defined sense of separation and staring at the door, all he could do was wait to find out.  
    “Cas, you in there?”  
    Dean took a deep breath. He was losing it.  
    Maybe in a larger sense he’d been losing it his entire life, one slow-motion disaster at a time. Never a spare second to calm down, rethink, regroup or regain any sort of self-purchase and then suddenly, there was time. An expanse of it, a quiet niche carved into a history where they didn’t belong; no distractions, no impending doom to keep him from picking up a mental shovel and digging through years and layers of one-hundred percent all-natural, self-made bullshit. Somewhere underneath everything Dean had become was the man he’d never gotten to be.  
    And it all began by opening that door.  
    “Dean?” Castiel looked up at him almost sadly, either he said what he had to say or he didn’t, but there was only one way to do it right.  
    “Listen, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, here.” Dean wiped a sweaty palm off on his jeans. “You fucked up, a lot. You lied to me, to Sam. You dragged me through the ringer and threw me to the dogs, broke my brother, screwed things up in ways I can’t even begin to list. Crowley, the leviathan, the whole goddamn thing, that was you at every single turn and now, there’s this.”  
    Castiel wanted to curl into himself, to look away and that was because he was altogether too familiar with the hot prickle of shame. So, he didn’t. He looked Dean in the eye because whatever he was saying, it was true and that meant he deserved how much it hurt to hear it.  
    “You didn’t ask, you didn’t think, you just wanted something and you took it and none of that makes me as angry as the fact that you have no idea why you can’t just do that. I trusted you! Hell, sometimes I trusted you over myself, over my own family- and then, when I’d put more faith in you than heaven or God, or anything else I have ever been fucking stupid enough to believe in, you screwed me, Cas.”  
    “And the worst part-” Dean turned, “Is that I’m not mad at you. I want to be mad at you, sometimes I want to be so mad I could lay you out and get it over with, but I can’t. So, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say- or think, or do, but I need to know one thing straight-up, an honest answer.”  
    “Okay.”  
    “Is what she said true?”  
    “I don’t-”  
    “Cas, do you love me?”  
    Quietly, “Yes.”  
    “You fucking stupid sonofabitch.”  
    It was a broken, ugly kiss.  
    Dean’s mouth collided with Castiel’s and it was a needy grind of clipping teeth, bad angle and too much tongue. Dean fisted the damp of Castiel’s coat because he was stupid and stubborn and that hadn’t changed. It was everything their first kiss wasn’t, just the idiotic culmination of a karmically matched pair. Broken man, broken angel and a kind of complicated codex that no one else would ever crack. Bullheaded, impractical flight risks tangled up in an emotional vortex that met at the mouth, and Dean was ready to toss in the towel, drown in the smell of mud and the scrape of stubble and the way it all made sense. Breathing heavily, he tore himself away and rested his forehead against Castiel’s, kissed him with his eyes.  
    Slowly, that’s how you build a lifetime. That was why, that first night, they wouldn’t complicate things with sex. In the morning Castiel would still be there and for the first time, so would he.  
    And more than anything else, that meant something.

================================================

  
_Time is endless, is boundless, brief._  
 _Know, yours is a temporary state of sanctuary_  
 _and due in due time, a matter of course._

**Part V**

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    Castiel didn’t sleep long. In time, he wouldn’t need to sleep at all but for moment, he appreciated the feeling. When he woke, Dean hadn’t left. Stilling, he listened to the whisper of Dean’s blood and gurgle of his stomach, to the nose whistle he had on the intake and the murmur on the exhale. Human noises, Dean’s noises, and it warmed him to his toes. Everything they were was wrapped up in the way they kissed hours earlier, held and clung, the way they occupied the same space so explosively it could only be something bigger. Castiel was happy, three-hundred and forty-eight freckles on the tally.  
    “Are you awake?” He asked quietly.  
    There was no answer, but he hadn’t expected one. Instead, he stole the opportunity to kiss Dean’s temple and the shell of his ear, suck up the sandy smell of his hair and rest his palm against the handprint he’d made a hundred mistakes before.  
    Kissing Dean’s neck and nuzzling closer, Castiel dozed until he felt him stir and when their mouths met, he lapped away the worry and licked away the doubt.Dean’s hands slipped up the back of his shirt, broad palms pressing against the curve of his spine, raking higher, learning the presence of his skin. Sigil scars on his belly, close-calls written in peppering braille. Another kiss- ten- twenty- more. Tongue and teeth and lips, a tingle that spread from bone to belly, to Castiel’s hardening cock.  
    “Cas, do you want-?”  
    “Shh,” Because words were cheap and words would ruin it. “Yes.”  
    “Okay.”  
    And that seemed to be everything Dean needed to hear. There was a method to what they were, a thickness in the air. Unbearably hot, they were sweating, sliding together, shirt to floor, pants, and gently Castiel guided Dean’s legs backwards. Untrained but not unknowledgeable, he didn’t need to ask where to see the panicked image of lubricant in Dean’s mind; left hand drawer, top, under that magazine we won’t talk about. Castiel sucked the momentary hesitation from his tongue, popped the cap and coated two fingers.  
    He made the most gorgeous noises. At first not sure if he should enjoy it, except that Castiel already knew he would. Castiel slid his fingers against the pucker, slicked it down and breached slowly inside. A hundred thousand things at once; wanted to lick him open, trail his tongue from the seam of his heavy sack to the tip of his leaking cock, sink down, fuck in, bury himself in the white-hot heat of Dean’s soul and find a place to belong.  
    Everything, forever, always. What he did do was lean forward, force his fingers rough and deep as he sucked Dean’s swollen prick and fell instantly in love with the skinsalt weight. A dark and deep smell, virile and spicy and he had seen it done before, mimicked the action until his own natural stride took hold. Angel on his knees before a man on his back and he sucked in his cheeks, swirled his tongue and decided that was exactly where he belonged.  
    More lube, more. Didn’t stretch Dean with another finger, he wanted him to feel it as raw and real as is was meant to be. That was the magic of it all; taking Dean in the only way he’d never been taken, the only way it would ever be new. A gift, something so precious that when Castiel pressed his cockhead inside, it was to graft himself to the memory of every fleshbump and sink into the way fuck-fuck-fuck sounded prettiest nude.  
    There was love in the way Castiel snapped his hips. Love in the way Dean’s breath hitched and his cock leaked and that he didn’t think he could come that way, but angle down slow and steady and he would.  
    “Cas- I’m gonna-!”  
    A hiss and a clench and Castiel’s knees buckled when he felt Dean bear down, wring him dry. Breathless and pressed forehead to forehead, Castiel kissed him as his cock softened inside. Between them was nothing but breezy silence and a room full of to-be made history.

 

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    When Dean woke up the second time, it was already past eleven.  
    Gently untangling himself from Castiel and realizing that he was smiling at the way he had kitten-curled himself around the blankets, reality hit him like a freight train.  
    God, he’d meant to take it slow!  
    But still, he wasn’t sorry. A little sore, but when he made his way downstairs it was with a spring in his step. He didn’t have all the answers, didn’t know how everything was going to pan out, but for the first time since the whole mess had started, he didn’t care. Forget the future, forget his madman-mission to get home. He had everything he needed; his brother, Cas. Hell, it wasn’t the end of the world, there was no monster of the week or daily disaster. He could finally kick back, put his feet up and breathe easy.  
    Sam and Dean finally had traded in the mystery machine and for all he had thought the job gave him purpose, as the days bled into months he’d started to wonder. Fall was coming, but when it was warm, there was no better feeling in the world than wasting hours fishing with an empty hook. There were moments when he worried, wondered what was happening, but Sam had told him they were still there. Had to trust himself, didn’t he? An entity could only move freely within it’s own timeline and still exist singularly, which meant when they’d overrode their own birth dates, they had snapped out of linear existence altogether.  
    Dean was finally free and as he stood in the kitchen and thought about Castiel upstairs warm and sleepy, he felt something he hadn’t in a long time: peace.

 

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    Meg was packing and Sam knocked politely on the door.  
    “Getting ready?”  
    “Yeah.”  
    “You okay?” Sam didn’t even surprise himself by asking. It was just, one of those things that happened when you had nothing but time. In a broad sense, he was going to miss the familiar company and in an even broader one, maybe he would miss Meg.  
    “No.” She snorted. “But you know, the whole hero thing is a good look for you. You should go to town and work that magic on something young and impressionable.”  
    “Meg-”  
    “Yeah, okay, I feel like crap.” She turned, jamming the last of her things in her bag. “Not looking forward to the same old good versus evil shtick. Guess the simple life made me soft.”  
    “Is it because of Cas?” Sam leaned against the wall.  
    “No.” By which she meant, only in part.  
    “It’s okay, you know. You c-”  
    “If you say care, so help me.”  
    Sam chuckled and Meg felt the tug of a smile at the corner of her mouth because wasn’t it a hundred-thousand shades of ridiculous; Sam Winchester, taking time for her second-class feelings. Yeah, she was going to miss the bunker and for a while, she thought she would be looking forward to having Castiel back- her Cas, but she wasn’t. It all went a little sour knowing that kissing her was just what he did when he couldn’t kiss Dean. A surrogate at best, or maybe good-intentioned mistake. “I’m okay.”  
    Sam sighed inwardly.  
    “And hey, stop being so nice.” She slung her bag over her shoulder and stepped into the curve of his airspace. “Gonna start thinking you want something.”  
    Carefully, Sam ignored the insinuation. “I could use a couple of the volumes we left in storage if you can swing it and maybe a-”  
    Meg’s mouth was hovering dangerously close to his. He could feel the hot puff of her breath, smell remnants of breakfast, beer. Part of him recoiled when he felt the press, but it was warm, lip-gloss wet and he could have stopped it, but he didn’t.  
    “Just takin’ one for the road, hero.”  
    Leaving Sam standing shellshocked in the bedroom, Meg didn’t need to turn around to know he touched the bow of his lip and maybe for a moment, wondered. If she came back- or when because who was she kidding- it would be because even without Cas, she had a reason. Rounding the downstairs with her bag, Dean asked, “Going somewhere?”  
    “Looks like.” She said. “Figure now is as good of a time as any to tie up the ends, considering.”  
    “Considering what?”  
    “That you’re banging my angel, for starters.” Dean coughed into his drink, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I’ll deal with the fast-forward, come back later maybe, whatever. I’m sure you boys won’t wither in my absence.”

 

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    Sam had been awake for hours and when he didn't find Dean in his room, he went out looking for him. It didn't occur to him to check Castiel's because there was no reason for him to be there. That was why when he came back just after noon, he was surprised to see Dean frying up lunch. He must have taken a walk to clear his head and came back shortly after Sam left the house, they had probably missed one another by a matter of minutes.  
    Taking a deep breath, Sam asked the inevitable question. "Where's Cas?"  
    "Outside." Dean said airily, because minutes earlier he'd kissed him windy in the kitchen and he didn't think the novelty would ever wear of.  
    "Is he okay...?" Sam probed.  
    Dean flipped whatever he was frying and was glad Sam couldn’t see the grin on his face. "Yeah."  
    Sam was going to shake his head at the whole thing, because hell, Dean knew it was ridiculous. The whole situation was top to bottom crazy but at the moment, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Dean Winchester, lady-killer, now domestically retired and batting for the other team? Yeah, Sam was going to have a little-brother’s mocktacular field day. But, even that didn’t dampen the mood. If Sam wanted to take the mickey outta him, so be it. In fact, Dean was on cloud nine and prepared to hear about it for the rest of his natural life.  
    Of course, Dean figured Sam’d be a little worried at first, mostly because Castiel was still working out his issues. He was going to have his moments, but they could deal with that as it came. It wasn’t that much different, once you got used to it- Dean recognized the signs, the vacant expression, the sense of smallness. It had taken a bit to pinpoint the nuance, but he knew when Cas was home, and also when he’d left the building. Sam would understand.  
    "Well, guess I should probably tell you that-”  
    "I'm glad you told him it wouldn't work." Sam said.  
    Dean stopped short and snapped his head around. "Huh?"  
    Giving him a sympathetic look, Sam leaned against the doorway. "I tried to tell him, man. I mean, even if you were- well, not that that matters. But, I know you'd never take advantage of anyone like that. I remember what it felt like, y’know, trying to make sense of things when you can’t see through the mess in your own head. It’s easy to sorta, mix up the messages? It makes a lot of sense that it’d be you, but I guess as long as you let him down easy.”  
    Dean's lunch was burning and hastily, he turned off the stove. Not trusting himself to answer, he just nodded. He’d expected a couple dozen are-you-sures, maybe some awkward did-you-ever-befores but then, Sam would clap him on the shoulder and say something supportive because that was just what Sam did. As it turned out, that wasn’t the case. Dean wasn’t sure if he was struck dumb or angry. Yeah, he’d done some sleazy shit in his day but if he thought Castiel hadn’t been in the driver’s seat? Christ, he’d never!  
    "You okay?"  
    "I'm fine."  
    "Are you that mad at him?"  
    Dean wanted to say no I'm mad at you, but he didn't. He plated his food knowing he wasn't going to eat it and tried to sound collected when he said, "No, I'm not mad at him."  
    "That's good." Sam paused, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Dean. I didn’t think you... I just thought with how tense things were, it would only make it worse. Are things- you and I, are we cool?"  
    No, they weren't. "Yeah, Sammy. We're cool.”

 

================================================

  
    Dean headed outside stomach heavy and found Castiel exactly where he expected to find him, just down the curve of the embankment where he liked to fish. Serenely, Castiel was smiling out at the surface at the water, watching the skeeters slide across without breaking the reflection. It was a perfect picture and the way the afternoon light made him glow was something else entirely. Without saying a word, Dean tucked up beside him and when he sat down, Castiel turned, gave him another small smile and as he leaned back, brushed their hands together.  
    Dean swallowed.  
    It was hard to look at Castiel and not see Sam's sympathizing disappointment, but he tried to blink it away. After everything, the whole goddamn song and dance, and was he not supposed to have what he had? Not only did he deserve a break but he was frankly sick and fucking tired of doing everybody else’s right thing.  
    Part of him knew that he should try to explain himself first, Sam was open-minded, would at least try to understand, but another part of him was bitter because Sam had made him feel guilty in the first place. Sam's good intentions had always outweighed his and somehow, it was never Dean that actually caused the problems. Whatever the outcome, he had two feasible options, tell Sam or don’t.  
    "Are you alright, Dean?"  
     _Yes. No. I don't know. You and me, yeah._ Dean took a deep breath. He was tired of living under the proverbial thumb because after a lifetime of making the right call, he deserved the benefit of the doubt. If anyone should know that, it should be Sam.  
    So fine, he thought. Fuck the moral high-ground.  
    "Yeah, Cas. I'm good."  
    Pulling him closer, Dean kissed him deep, kissed him hard and hot, heavy until he forgot anything but the feeling. Rougher, harder and Castiel seemed to understand; soft mouth becoming clipped teeth, tongue-suck and violence. His hands were leaving pinpoint bruises everywhere they could reach and if it were a fight, Dean wasn't going to win it. Flipped over superhumanly and pressed into the dirt. Castiel ground down against him, was powerful- was remnant- fuck, just like that!  
    "Cas- fuck-!"  
    Dean was straining up against the friction, was lost in the perfect weight of that straight-planed body crushing his. It was so fucking good, if he could just-  
    "Cas? Dean! You guys out here?"  
    Damnit, it was Sam!  
    Scrambling upwards, Dean tried to ignore the hurt confusion on Castiel's face as he was dumped unceremoniously from lap to lawn.  
    "Sorry, I-"  
    "Don't want Sam to see us." Castiel said.  
    "Yes. No! Okay, it's not like that, just-"  
    "Guys? That you?"  
    "Yeah, just a minute!" Dean turned. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours and he was already making a mess of everything! "Cas, I'm not-"  
    "It's alright, Dean." Castiel pursed his lips. "I understand."  
    Dean was ashamed. He wanted what they did together, but he didn’t want the admission that would come with it. Bitterly, Castiel was self-aware. Not a celebration but a silent secret kept, but then… He had expected less, hadn’t he?

 

================================================

  
    Meg was swimming through the current of some existential, time-slip sea.  
    It was hard to navigate, hard to find the right road in a hundred thousand others that existed purely in potentia. She needed to be precise, needed to snap back into her body and complete the flow. Stretching, shrieking, a thousand incarnations of self, and when she arrived, it was with the gale-force strike of hell’s hathed fury.  
    Immediately she regretted leaving, but she had a part to play so she’d play it.  
    Castiel was crazy and Meg hated the way he needed to be catered to in a way she hadn’t thought she would. Before, in the past- well, her future-past- she’d loved the dependency because it was tangible. Castiel had needed her, and there was safety in being needed. But now, and staring down the barrel of the proverbial gun, what disturbed her most was how much she missed where she had come from. In what felt like minutes after she arrived back in Castiel’s whitewashed sick-room there was a plan and then an execution; two hunters, a broken angel and a demon trying to change the world because dying free was better than not.  
    Summarily, they won. At least, if that's what anyone could call it. Dean and Castiel were gone, Sam was alone and Crowley was out for blood. Meg had assumed he would be and when she heard, "The king of hell will see you now."  
    She said: "Not fucking likely."

 

================================================

  
    When Meg arrived back in time she crashed into the icy cold water of the creek stuttering back into sudden materia. Disoriented and freezing she forced herself upright on shaky legs and waded out of the mire. She’d made it mostly in one piece but the operative was that she’d made it at all. Fuck Crowley, fuck hell and heaven and the whole goddamn plan because there was good whisky and good conversation waiting for her, a home.  
    Resting for a moment on the edge of the creek bed, Meg took a moment. She wasn’t sure how to tell Sam and Dean or more specifically, _what_ to tell them. She knew the cut of Dean’s complex, if he knew that somewhere across the divide Sam- or his incarnate self- was alone, he’d drop it all and go running. There was something ingrained in the dynamic of those two that would upend everything and point in fact, she didn’t want that to happen.  
    What dug in deepest wasn’t that she knew she was going to lie, but that after a lifetime of moral ambiguity, she actually cared.  
    For an hour, Meg sat in the rain.  
    Why the hell should she give a crap? Demons lie and that’s what she was. So, what was that feeling, the one that made her feel bad for knowing she was going to do it anyway? Hazel and puppy-brown, something wheedling in her complex consciousness and making her honest. Eventually she dragged herself upright and willed herself into the direction of the house. She wasn’t part of the Scooby gang, she didn’t need to subscribe to the do-good dogma, tell the truth because it was the right thing to do. There was right and then there was easy but strangely, it wasn’t easier to lie. Sam, Dean and Castiel, they’d made their choices and ruining the only second-chance they were ever going to have by mouthing off wasn’t going to make it better.  
    Steady in time but not in mind, Meg got up before it was too dark to see and picked her way towards the house. Slinking into the bunker, she didn’t have to look up to know three pairs of eyes were staring her down and waiting for an answer. So, she gave it to them.  
    “We won.” She said.  
    And to her credit, they bought it in one.

 

================================================

  
    Cas wasn’t in the bunker when Dean got back. His room was empty. All the dishes were washed and put away, but he wasn’t in the kitchen, either. Sam gave Dean a curious look when he poked his head into the pantry, but Dean was getting worried. He searched the bunker end-to-end, twice, the vehemence of his cursing growing greater after each empty room. Meg followed him at her own lazy pace, and he could hear her voice and Sam’s echoing down the hall, unconcerned. Scowling his way up the stairs and back out into the darkening woods, Dean knew he had to find Cas and figure out how to make things right.  
    Castiel was behind the hill in the back. He heard Dean’s voice crack against the brick-laden entrance to their home, his name sounding harsh in the gloam. A crow answered cackily, and Castiel thought about omens. In his head, Lucifer was pitching pine cones into the shadows, whooping every time he hit a crow. Castiel supposed he wasn’t really hitting them, and wondered idly if the crows were hallucinations, too. When Lucifer wasn’t hurling things into the skyline, he was gloating. Castiel could feel his vessel’s muscles seizing as he shivered, the crisp autumn bite of the air becoming sharper as the sun sank below the horizon.  
    “Cas! Cas, goddammit, where the hell are you?”  
    Castiel supposed he should answer. He had to accept that the bone-deep joy he’d felt during their night together wasn’t going to be repeated; that what he had felt had not, in fact, been mutually shared between them.  
    “Ca-as!”  
    His name echoed, a drawn-out syllable. Over and over Dean called for him, circled closer in increments. His name, followed by cursing, and the scuffling sound of Dean’s footsteps.  
    Only a matter of time now.  
    Lucifer was still taunting him, but unbalanced on the breeze he faded in and out of Castiel’s line of sight. As his mind healed, the hallucinations had more trouble self-sustaining. Dean’s voice pushed them back, his approach looming in Castiel’s mind. His chest clutched in trepidation, in anticipation of pain. He’d made a fool of himself, a lovesick fool, a trope as old as the universe and how much better he should have known than to fall in love!  
    “What the fuck, Cas.”  
    Dean rounded the hill. He panted as he climbed the gentle slope, boots crushing the grass, and he sank to his heels in few feet in front of where Castiel was sitting.  
    “Didn’t you hear me?”  
    Castiel nodded and avoided looking Dean in the eye.  
    “Dude, you’re shivering. How long have you been sitting there?”  
    Dean removed his jacket and wound it around Castiel’s shoulders, over the coat he was already always wearing, moving on instinct. Cas looked so freaking sad. _Goddammit,_ he thought. _Why do I always fuck everything up?_  
    Finally looking at him as he tugged the jacket tight across his chest, the sleeves hung limp behind Castiel’s body. Dean’s hands lingered, smoothing down the front of the fabric, stroking from Cas's shoulders to his stomach as if he could soothe the pain he’d caused.  
    “I’m not cold.”  
    “I’m so sorry.”  
    And he meant it. He’d been so caught up in what Sam had said, that clutch of fear in his chest that whispered that his brother was right, that he was selfish, was taking advantage. But, Sam didn’t understand anything about what was going on between them, and how could he when Dean hadn’t told him anything? He knew when he’d pulled away from Cas at the creek he’d hurt him, but he was going to make it right. He could, now.  
    “It’s fine, Dean. It was too-”  
    Dean kissed him, cutting off the words, cutting off the air.  
    Hands sliding under his jacket to press palms flat against Cas's collar bone, he dug his fingertips in and sucked hard on Cas's bottom lip. A little whimper, and maybe it came from him. He pulled back just long enough to suck in a ragged breath, intoxicated by the heat of the Cas's body under his. He stroked his thumb across Cas's cheekbone, catching a stray eyelash and letting the breeze take it. Cradling the side of Cas's face, their noses were millimeters apart.  
    “Dean.”  
    “I’m sorry, okay?” Dean said. Cas had to know he meant it. His voice lowered as his lips hovered just above Cas's. “Want you so bad, okay? I do.”  
    They stared at each other for a moment on the darkening hill. Castiel tried to accept that. He’d said he wanted him. But, a nagging voice said: Right now? Because no one will see? But rushed touches in the dark, if not enough, had to be better than nothing.  
    “We should go inside,” he tried.  
    “In a minute.”  
    Shared breaths, the only sound except the whistle of the wind through the trees. Castiel imagined a lifetime of sharing Dean’s bed only to be pushed out of it in the predawn hush. A lifetime or less of lying to Sam, bringing Dean off in secret places, closets, the woods, alone and hurried, and never, ever talking about it. He had thought for one brief moment in time that Dean had felt the same depth of longing, belonging, as they clung to each other. But this afternoon, with the slow foreboding that had built for the last few days, he knew better now.  
    Still, Dean wanted him. It was more than he deserved, and he could spend a dozen lifetimes stretched out passively underneath him and never make up for all the ways he had caused him grief or hardship. For that reason if no other, he thought he could do try.  
    The crisp chill in the air peaked, wind cutting like a knife through the thin shirt Dean was wearing. Their lips met again, urgent but unhurried, and Dean pushed gently against Cas's shoulders until the two of them toppled back into the grass. He hovered on either side of Cas's body elbows buried in the dirt, he couldn’t believe he’d ever considered denying himself. He could be honest with his brother, make Sam understand that it ran much deeper than sex. He’d given himself permission to want again, and all he wanted was Cas. Cas who was hesitantly leaning up, lips parted in a way that made it impossible not to kiss him. Cas!  
    Dean pressed kisses heavily into the skin of Castiel’s throat, and Castiel felt heat spiral out from each caress until he felt impossibly hot despite the chill of the ground. Dean had said he wanted him, and maybe, selfishly, Castiel wanted him to prove it.  
    Dean hissed when Castiel slid his hands just under the waistband of his pants, fingers stroking the skin of his lower back and tracing the curve of his ass. Dean laughed, burying his face against Castiel’s neck, breath hot puffs as he wriggled away. Castiel frowned until Dean looked up, rolled his eyes, and told Castiel that his hands were freezing. But, when Castiel started to pull away, Dean pressed closer.  
    “Don’t stop,” he said.  
    So Castiel didn’t. He reached between their bodies, unfastened Dean’s button, wrapped his cold hand around his cock. Dean let out a stream of curses that Castiel, emboldened, took as encouragement. Using both hands to stroke, Dean’s hips started to move in little involuntary jerks, arms trembling where they were braced on either side of Castiel’s head. His eyes were closed, squeezed shut, and he let his head fall forward until his forehead rested against Castiel’s, breathy little moans close enough that Castiel’s lips vibrated with them.  
    “God, Cas, don’t stop,” Dean grunted. “Don’t- don’t stop, don’t- “  
    He broke off with a keen, hips jerking out of rhythm, not even trying to fight it anymore. Cas's touch was perfect, the best thing Dean had ever felt, loose grip and cool hands but endless, endless the way he stroked, blue hyperfocused gaze charting every quiver and cataloguing each action-reaction like some sort of dream lover. Dean felt his balls tighten, he hadn’t planned it like this, coming from a few minutes of a hand job! He’d planned to make love to Cas all night, take his time, candles or something, but- oh, _fuck_. It was unbelievably good, and he wasn’t going to last much longer.  
    “Shit, I-”  
    “It’s all right.”  
    He came with the rumble of Cas's voice across his lips, and then Cas was kissing him as his arms gave out. Pressed together there was a sticky mess of his come on both of their clothes and who could possibly care when everything in the whole world was perfect? Little tremors made his muscles jerk as Cas's hands- freakin’ awesome hands- ran along his back in soothing little circles.  
    When his brain finally cooled off enough that he could think beyond holy shit and that was awesome, Dean felt like an ass. He’d hunted Cas down to apologize and beg his forgiveness. Instead, he’d been treated to a damn great orgasm and was ready to lay down and take a nap with Cas's untouched dick poking into his stomach. He shook off the post-orgasmic haze and raised himself up on his elbows, grimacing at the slight pull where the come had dried against his skin.  
    “Hey,” He said. Seeking Castiel’s eye, he tried to catch Cas's gaze where it had focused vacantly on his shoulder. “You still with me?”  
    “Yes. It’s cold, we should go inside.”  
    Dean’s hand stroked a slow rhythm against his bicep. Something was still tense between them, unsaid, and when Cas finally looked at him, all Dean could see was a kind of resigned sadness.  
    “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I should have taken care of you first, after earlier-”  
    Dean broke off. He couldn’t believe that he’d come charging in intent on begging forgiveness and instead wound up thinking with his dick and making even more of an ass of himself. He tugged at Cas's clothes, brushing his knuckles against the too-tight fabric covering Cas's cock and looking up with a grin.  
    “I’ve got you, come on. I’m gonna give you the best blow job ever.” He grinned easy-slow, just like he knew he was good at. “C’mon, show you how sorry I am.”  
    Dean wasn’t sure what had changed, but it was instant. Cas's hips jerked forward, but then he bit his lip and stopped, turning away and trying to sit up. Dean’s face fell and he pulled back, hands twitching awkwardly at his sides as he crouched, hovering, still half on top and pinning Cas to the lawn.  
    “Cas! Come on, man, I’m sorry. I’m going to talk to Sammy, okay? Look, we don’t have to do this right now. I just- I just wanted to make it up to you, you know?”  
    Castiel froze, his eyes snapping to meet Dean’s but Dean was still talking.  
    “We can go in, I’ll make you a cup of tea or something. We can talk to Sam together-”  
    But, Cas interrupted him.  
    “You’re going to tell your brother? Why?”  
    Dean pulled away and sat down heavily. Pushing himself up on his elbows, Castiel tried looked him in the eye. Moodily yanking out blades of grass out by their roots and tossing them down the hill, Dean looked tense and was frowning despite his disheveled afterglow. He should be relaxed and happy, shouldn’t he? Castiel had given exactly what was wanted!  
    “I thought you were upset because of- I mean, if you’re embarrassed or whatever we don’t have to tell anyone.”  
    “I’m not embarrassed.” Castiel said blandly. “I just don’t want to make things difficult for you.”  
    “I don’t care about that! Look. I’m in this, okay? Sam thinks your lights still aren’t all the way on upstairs and he’s going to give me hell because he thinks I’m, you know, taking advantage. But he’ll come around. I mean, I’m not, am I?”  
    “What?”  
    “Taking advantage.”  
    Cas's hand found his, twining their fingers together and rubbing the grass stains away.  
    “No, but it’s all right if you just want a sexual partner. You don’t need to discuss it with Sam.”  
    “Is that what you want?”  
    “Dean-”  
    “Jesus Christ!” Dean said, “Do you want to be with me or not?”  
    For a minute, they stared at each other, Cas's eyes scrunching up as he leaned closer to Dean, trying to puzzle him out. Staring right back, Dean waited and Castiel sighed. Bringing Dean’s hands to his lips, and nodded a little to himself.  
    “I do.”  
    Okay, Dean took a deep breath. He could deal with that. “Just sex or… you know, uh...?”  
    “However I can have you.”  
    “I want more than that, Cas, but only if you- I said I’m in, all right? I mean it. I’m in. Do you-”  
    “I’ll take you up on your offer of oral sex in the bedroom, in that case. It’s cold.”  
    Dean breathed out, finally, and gave a small, relieved smile.  
    Cas stood up, and extended a hand to help Dean to his feet.  
    “Come on, then. Let’s go see if you can manage to achieve, how did you put it, ‘the best blow job ever.’”  
    “Damn straight I can.”  
    As they stumbled down the hill together, Dean’s grabbed Cas’ arm just above the elbow to keep from falling as the momentum of the incline overcame his balance. A few stolen kisses under the starlight, and then Cas was dragging him inside the warmth of their home.

 

================================================

  
    A week later, things were tentatively going well.  
    It wasn’t that Castiel didn’t appreciate the primal charge Dean apparently got from making love outside under the stars. Hours spent in the woods, telling Sam and Meg they were going for a walk, trailing lazy kisses over the freckles brought out by the sun. Forearms scraped by some ancient oak and with the delicious snap of Dean’s hips behind him- it was good, but the nights were better. Cool, teasing breezes, the sleepy entangling of fingers, his head pillowed on Dean’s chest until the hoot of an owl drove them inside to separate bedrooms.  
    Separate bedrooms, still.  
    It had been Castiel who had insisted that Dean not tell Sam just yet. If his motives were pure, it would be that he didn’t want to drive a wedge between them when they were starting to see eye to eye again. It would be because Sam hadn’t had a chance, yet, to see how much progress Castiel had been making and how he was nearly completely healed.  
    But, the more he considered it… He didn’t think his motives were pure. What he was afraid was that if Dean told Sam and they fought, what happened? Tell Sam or don’t, but Castiel knew that darkly, he’d be happier to keep secrets that lose what he had.

 

================================================

  
    Dean took a deep breath.  
    He’d known he would have to talk to Sam sooner or later, but part of him was still screaming not now later when he cleared his throat in the kitchen doorway.  
    "Hey." He said when Sam turned around.  
    "Hey, what's up?"  
    "Uh, nothing. Some stuff. Nothing big." Dean rubbed his neck and cursed inwardly. "I was uh- wondering if we could talk. You busy?"  
    Sam had a dozen or more books spread out on the kitchen table but without hesitating, he carefully shut the one he’d been reading. "Is something wrong?"  
    Was something wrong? No. Dean was the happiest he'd been in a long time. Cas was- it was just- yeah, he was happy and things were good and that was why there was a lot riding on him not saying the wrong thing. Sam had to understand that what was going on, it was going on because it was a good thing and not because Dean needed something on the side now that barsluts were on the shortside and dollar bills bought a lot more than girls named Charmaine.  
    "No, nothing wrong."  
    "Okay, so...?"  
    Dean cleared his throat again for what felt like the hundredth time. "So, uh- whoo, tough crowd."  
    "Dean..."  
    "Cas and I are- y'know." Dean make a hand gesture that either meant incredibly close or too much information.  
    Sam blinked. "You're what?"  
    "I just-"  
    "Are you kidding me? After all he's been through and you-"  
    "It's not like that!"  
    "Okay, so what's it like?"  
    "It's..." God, what should he say? Great, wonderful, perfect? All those things that were missing when he said yeah baby, I'll give you a call. Cas was Cas! And he just… "It's nice."  
    "Nice." Sam said.  
    "Nice! Yes, okay? It's- look, I know you're on the whole that's not okay for reasons morality train, but it's not like that."  
    He raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"  
    "Like whatever you're thinking! I don't fucking know." Dean was close to giving up, "Listen, I'm not asking you to be on board. I'm just telling you so you know."  
    "Why?"  
    "Because I don't want to lie to you? Cas doesn't deserve it, and besides that, when has keeping secrets done us any fucking good? I'm tired of that shit, Sammy. I'm done. So, I need you to listen when I tell you that I know when Cas is Cas and when he's cuckoo for cocoa puffs. There’s a difference, and green light go is crystal.”  
    "Okay." Sam was doing his best to take it in stride. "And this has nothing to do with the fact there's no tail to chase around here?"  
    "Fuck, no! I told you it's-"  
    "Dean, you understand that he loves you, right? He might not get a lot of things, but this is... You can't do this to him."  
    It was Dean's turn to ask, "What?"  
    "It's not an experiment for him!"  
    "It's not an experiment for me!"  
    "Excuse me?”  
    "l- I care, okay? About Cas. And we're- it's, listen. It's not your business. I'm just telling you that I'm not hiding it, and I'm not asking for your go-ahead, I'm asking you to can it, even if everything is telling you not to."  
    "Dean-"  
    "I'm asking, Sammy."  
    And there was a tense silence before, "Okay."  
    "Okay?"  
    "Okay." Sam couldn't say he was without reservation, but there was only a few times in his life that he'd seen Dean come that close to emotionally bare. Dean and Cas? He wouldn't have called it, sure as hell wouldn't have bet on it, but Dean was asking and their future had taught him one thing if nothing else. Sometimes, it's not your gut telling you that something isn't right and it isn't your morality as often as your pride. Just because he thought he knew best, didn't mean he did. "Look,” Sam said, “I'm tired of not trusting you."  
    "Well that’s a new one.”  
    Sam ignored him, "If you ask me if I have doubts, I do. If you want me to tell me it's a good idea, I'm not going to. I don't know is this sudden revelation is a Cas thing or a you thing or a- a- situational thing." Dean scowled but Sam shook his head, "But that's not important. I guess what I'm saying is, fine, okay, you and Cas, I’m listening."  
    "And you're okay with it?"  
    "I just said I don’t know. But what I do know is that, Dean, honestly?” Sam leaned back in his chair, “I'm tired of not trusting you. I can't make your decisions for you. Things go wrong when we police one another so, okay. That's it. You told me, and it's done."  
    "I don't want you to treat him-"  
    "I won't."  
    "Thanks."  
    "You're welcome."  
    "No, I mean it." Dean couldn't look him in the eye, but he didn’t know how to put the words together, either. "Leap of faith, right? I’m saying thanks for that.”  
    And Sam didn’t answer but then again, he didn’t have to.

 

================================================

  
    Warm and pressed against Dean's chest that night, Castiel couldn't sleep so he focused on the sound of his breathing- in and out, irritating snuffle- in and out again. Dean had told Sam! He’d told him and whether Meg had overheard or just know, she’d packed her bags and invited herself into Dean’s old cot in the next room. It felt surreal to suddenly be aware of the fact that it wasn’t sneaking around anymore, wasn’t even his room but theirs. Calmly and with a lifetime spreading out before them, Castiel didn't consider the complicated questions like what would happen next but already there was a traitorous thought in the back of his mind: what if he didn’t want to be an angel anymore? He could have one happy, mortal life that would come to it's natural end if he cut loose his grace. As he brushed back Dean's hair and saw the first flash of grey, he wondered what it would feel like. Would the voices stop, would he be better? He didn’t know, but he knew sooner or later Dean was going to get older and it would be with him or it wouldn’t be. With this in mind and out of habit not need, eventually he drifted off as the vacant tick of their lifeline clock called in another another day.  
    Good things end; and Castiel slept safely never knowing that bending the rules was not the same as breaking them. In time, everything in time, and someday all bargains come due.

 

================================================

**Part VI**

================================================

December 25th 1901

 

  
    There was a fire roaring in the hearth, everything felt sleepy and warm. Castiel was tucked against Dean's side and everyone felt full. Meg was reclining in the chair next to Sam's and after a languid stretch she yawned.  
    "Tired?" Sam asked.  
    "No, bored."  
    Castiel smiled into Dean's shoulder, bored was a nice feeling. It was like having nothing to do and nowhere to be but everything you were doing and exactly where you were was perfect. He was comfortable and although the novelty of being able to be close to Dean whenever he wanted had worn off since they'd told everyone, it didn't make him enjoy it less.  
    "So, we gonna do the Christmas thing?"  
    Sam's smile was an easy one, "Anyone else feeling presents?"  
    "Readin' my mind, Sammy." Dean grinned down at Castiel, "Hey, velcro-butt, wanna play Santa?"  
    "Play... What?"  
    Sam laughed and Dean's cheek colored, but Meg rolled her eyes. "Mind out of the gutter, Clarence. He's talking gifts."  
    "Oh." Castiel drew himself upward and immediately missed the warmth. "In any preferable order?"  
    "Yeah, whichever is closest."  
    As it turns out, the closest was Sam's from Meg. Brushing it off she watched ruefully from the corner of her eye as he unwrapped the book she'd found for him. There was another book from Castiel and as he opened Dean's thin package, he couldn't help but laugh.  
    "Century porn, Dean?"  
    "Check out the ankle shot on page ten, man. Highly spankable."  
    "You're disgusting."  
    Next was Dean’s. A new gun, a hunting jacket and some fleece and flannel for the bed. Meg didn't expect a gift but was surprised by a bottle of good Whisky and finally, Castiel settled back down at Dean's side to open his presents- a scarf from Sam, some licorice and surprisingly, nothing from Dean.  
    "Hey, don't give me the blue-eyed guilt face, I gotcha something. It was too big for the tree, have a look behind the sofa."  
    Castiel did and paused staring at it, "A chair?"  
    "Yeah."  
    "Why?"  
    "Dunno, you're only sleeping every other night now. Thought you might want somewhere to sit if I'm still down for the count, read or whatever." Dean shrugged and didn’t add, and so you’ll be close. "If you don't like it-."  
    "No, it’s a lovely gift. Very practical.”  
    "Yeah, yeah. Don't get all misty." Dean rubbed the back of his neck and ignored Sam's snigger, "Well, happy ho-ho and whatever."  
    "Here here." Sam toasted and after a moment of contented silence, "So, I was thinking..."  
    "That's never good."  
    Sam ignored him, "I was thinking of getting in touch with some hunters."  
    A hush rolled through the room and Dean asked, "Why?"  
    "More information, mostly. It would be tracks covered the whole way, but- some of the stuff in these books? I have no idea if it works or not, and since we're out of the business I need someone to field test the lore.”  
    "We're not supposed to get involved that way, man. I mean, hunters? We’re the most likely nomination for celebrity challenge. Keyframes, or whatever it was that you’d said. I mean, dude, if anyone can throw a wrench in the works, it’s going to be someone up to their elbows in monster guts, you don’t know what could happen."  
    "We won’t be involved, just...” Sam sighed. It was hard to explain.  
    "Think of it like a trial run, freckles." Meg kicked up her feet, "Leak some info, ask for some back. It'll be kept on the down low, and we’re not giving them anything they couldn’t find out on their own, just expediting the process a tad."  
    Dean got it, but he still didn’t like it."So what, you in on this?"  
    "You're looking at your recently officiated, untraceable delivery girl.”  
    "Are you sure you should-" He started, but Sam cut him off.  
    "I need you to trust me on this one, Dean."  
    And Dean didn’t need to consider his options before he said, “Okay.”

 

================================================

February 17th 1902

 

  
    Dean was spread out on his bed feeling boneless. Admittedly, he was addicted to the lazy way Castiel touched him even after they were spent, laying together breathless and sticky with the afterglow. Groaning as he rolled over, Dean felt his knee pop and winced; pain he didn’t mind, but the sound gave him the heebs. Already he could feel the leak of Castiel's spunk dribbling down his thighs and ignored the cold wet for the hot and warm of Castiel's tongue. Dean had never been a kisser, he enjoyed it- sure, but for most of his life he’d more or less categorized it as step three of the end-game playbook. Kissing was what you did to set the stage for the good parts coming, but kissing Cas? That was different.  
    Homey, sandy-soft and always in a thousand different ways. There was hot and urgent, slow and sensual, a peck, a purse, a pull and then a push. Castiel kissed like it was a story and Dean was never sure if he was being told or written, but the mystery was half the fun.  
    Castiel's cock was pressed against his thigh; half-mast but the twitch gave him away. He wanted more, always, and with the stretch of a nothing-doing Sunday before them, why not?  
    "Hey, roll-over."  
    "Why?" Castie grumbled into the curve of his neck, "Comfortable."  
     “If I'm naked, don't ask questions." Dean said, and felt Castiel's smile against his throat. “C’mon.”  
    Grudgingly, Castiel rolled over and Dean fisted his cock, thumbed the tip and grinned. For all the sex they had, there were probably a dozen things they hadn't tried because Cas wouldn't know how to ask and Dean wasn’t willing to admit he wanted it. When Castiel fucked him, there seemed to be a set of unwritten rules as to how it would happen. Face to face, hands and knees, always a little rougher, deeper, harder. Enjoying it was still different than admitting how much he wanted to be used that way and despite spending a lifetime pretending he didn’t like that kind of thing, he did.  
    Already the exception to every rule, Dean wanted to ride Cas second-time sloppy and more than that, he wanted him to know that he wanted it. Sometimes, he didn’t think Castiel really got it, that he wasn’t doing things just to humor him. On his knees, on his back, in the shower, kitchen, yard… The common denominator was always going to be Castiel and that everything they did, it was worth doing. Swinging his leg left, Dean straddled Castiel's waist, shimmied lower, kissed him as he carded through his hair.  
    "What are you doing?"  
     “Nothing.” Dean leaned back, Castiel's cockhead blunting against his slickened hole. "But you're invited."  
    "Dean-"  
    "Don't make me change my mind."  
    Dean was already sinking down and there was something about that stretch that did it for him every goddamn time. He loved the curve of Castiel’s dick, the taste, the burn and the way he got to be vulnerable for a space in time. For Castiel, for the slide of his tongue and the thump of his heart, for all the reasons they shouldn’t but should. Dean was willing, and he liked that he could be.  
    Shifting, Dean spread his legs farther, felt the way Castiel arched and loved the way he groaned into his fist. Christ, if his mouth wasn’t gorgeous and when Dean rocked forward, he knew he was going to fall headlong into the feeling. Fucking cockwhore, god, yeah, and maybe he was, but maybe the last step in what they were- whatever they were- was admitting there was nothing he wouldn’t do just to do it with Cas.  
    "Shit-" Dean found his rhythm and let his calves do the work. Castiel's hands were fisted in the sheets and Dean's cock was bouncing against his belly. Harder, faster- his leg was cramping and that didn't matter because there was that inevitable, perfect heat blooming in his belly. So close- never close enough- black and white and nothing but the way Castiel said his name like it was a goddamn emotion.  
    "Cas!" Dean could feel him come undone and fisting his own dick as he tried to ride out the wave, he creamed messily over Castiel's stomach. Sweating, cocksore and beyond spent, he pulled off gingerly, the heated throb of his abused asshole reading red-raw-swollen in surround sound. "Damn,” He heaved.  
    Sitting up on his elbows, Castiel was puzzled. It wasn’t that Dean didn’t enjoy himself when they had sex, he did, and Castiel would like to say he was an adept lover… But, up until present, Dean had never expressly admitted he enjoyed when Castiel slid into him, made love to him, took him. His body might tell a different story between the sheets but Dean never actually talked about it and Castiel never asked. Frankly, it had just become habit not to. Realizing the silence had stretched too long, Castiel looked up apologetically from underneath knitted eyebrows.  
    "Damnit, Cas. You're a pain in my ass." Dean cringed because the literalism hit him a second too late. “I just thought we could do other stuff, things you want, things that… Different stuff, whatever.”  
     “Why?”  
     “I want to, I don’t know?” Dean rolled onto his back, heat crawling across his cheeks. “Stop asking questions.”  
    And to his credit, Castiel only smiled. Coming from Dean, it was exactly like hearing I love you.

 

================================================

April 16th 1902

 

  
    “Cas, what the hell is that noise.” Dean groaned from underneath a pile of blankets and one eye still closed, glared across the room. “Is that Sam’s typewriter?”  
    “No, it’s my typewriter.” Clack, clack, clack. Swish-ding.  
    “Why?”  
    “Sam asked me if I would write about the angels.”  
    “Selling the farm, huh?” Dean hauled himself upright, “Anything in there about that thing I do with my tongue?”  
    “That’s the next chapter.”  
    “Saucy today, I like that. Want a shower?”  
    “No, thank-you.” Clack, clack, clack. Swish-ding.  
    “Awww, c’mon. I betcha you could use a wash.”  
    “Except that ‘use a wash’ is your euphemism for a morning quickie and,” Castiel turned, “I would like to get the last of this finished before breakfast.”  
    “You sure?” Dean padded across the room, “’Cause I don’t think you’re sure.”  
    Skating his hand down the plane of Castiel’s chest he pinched his right nipple, then his left, tickled his way down his bedshirt and rubbed between his legs. Nibbling his ear, Dean chased the curve of his neck with sloppy kisses and then deviously asked, “You still sure?”  
    “You are...” Castiel’s hips shifted, “A difficult person to negotiate with.”  
    “It’s a gift, really.”  
    Dean was already palming Castiel’s cock and snaking his hand into his flannels, he thumbed the tip, jacked it fast and raw and dirty. God, Cas made such pretty sounds and as he got closer he made that disastrous little mewl that undid Dean every time. He was getting close- closer- yeah, right there-! Fuck, he arched so pretty and Dean bit his shoulder, sucked in a bruise, fist-fucked his dick and loved that Castiel’s mouth was a o’d and desperate please.  
     _DING!_  
    As Castiel came, he hit the page set bar and snorting into his neck, Dean left a parting kiss on Castiel’s pulsepoint. Stripping down he grabbed his towel. “Have fun with that whole, uh, writing thing.”  
    Castiel rolled his eyes, but Dean caught him smiling. Fifteen minutes later and still wet from the shower, Dean waltzed back into their shared bedspace only to find that Castiel had already gone down to breakfast. In his place was a single sheet of paper half-fed through the typewriter and in the center: I love you.  
    Warmly, Dean thought he could get used to the sound of those keys.

 

================================================

October 22nd 1903

  
    "Hey, stretch. Got your mail delivery." It was a sunny Tuesday when Meg breezed into the bunker and set a bundle of letters on the table next to where Sam, Dean and Castiel were eating their breakfast. "Leafed through, looks like you're a go on the Reicher file, flopped on the Bogey thing."  
    "I didn't think salt would do that one, but, the lore did say..." Sam scribbled a note in his notebook. "What about the Fentons?"  
    "Still tracking."  
    "Hmmm." Sam made another note, chewed the end of his pen thoughtfully and ate some oatmeal.  
    Stretching Dean thumbed through the pile. He hated to admit it, but Sam was good at what he was doing. Home base was starting to look like the world’s creepiest military operation more and more each day. In fact, Sam had confirmed or disproved more hunter’s rumors than they had their entire lives, all from the kitchen table and network growing, he was only picking up speed. Crotchety, distrustful bastards by nature, Sam’s hunters still knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sam was giving them things that they needed and he only ever asked for a letter in return. By all accounts, it was a decent deal and it was no small wonder that they didn’t bother questioning Meg; probably thought any player powerful enough to keep a demon on a leash had to be someone worth avoiding.  
    For this reason, they still had their anonymity, Sam had something worth doing and Dean, well... Without realizing he'd done it, Dean slipped his hand into Castiel's underneath the table. Less the weight of the world on his shoulders, he finished his breakfast in comfortable silence and if he thought for a split second he saw... _something_ , out of the corner of his eye, he wasn’t a hunter anymore.  
    It was nothing but a trick of the light.

 

================================================

January 24th 1904

 

  
    It was just past noon and Dean was heading back to the bunker, freezing in his wool cap with two hares slung over his shoulder. Pickings might be lean in the winter, but he'd be goddamned if they were going to eat canned anything with a side of canned anything for the millionth time since the snow had hit. Besides, he hadn't quite worked his way up to big game. Cold-cock a vamp he could handle, but shooting Bambi seemed a little sadistic. So, rabbits one and two had bit the bullet but if they knew how good they'd taste with the last of the spuds, he figured they'd probably forgive him.  
    Pushing his way into the bunker, it was less than a split second between when he realized it was dark and then: "SURPRISE!"  
    On instinct, Dean hit the deck and reached for his gun. Craning his neck upward, he realized he was staring right at Sam's upside-down face and he felt a flush of embarrassment run hot across his cheeks. Some instincts were hard to kick and in his line of work, surprise of any kind generally fell into the fight or flight category. Dean cringed.  
    Floppy-haired sonobitch was laughing!  
    "Wow," Sam grinned, "I'd add a happy birthday, but I think the shock'd kill you."  
    Dean griped, "Help me up." Sam held out a hand and brushing himself off, Dean added. "Didn't anybody even tell you not to do that?"  
    "What, throw you a party?" Sam thumbed over his shoulder at Castiel in a makeshift hat and Meg, leaning casually against the wall. There was a cake on the table, and Dean shook his head.  
    "I could have shot you!"  
    "You didn't."  
    "Not the point."  
    "Shut up, there's cake." Sam clapped him on the shoulder, "And don't be grouchy, you didn't think we'd forget, did you?"  
    Frowning, Dean realized that he had. He'd actually gone and forgotten his own birthday! He should have suspected something was up considering Castiel had been acting like captain conspicuous all morning. Generally, he’d just chalked it up the his overall and million-strong quirckisms. But, not willing to admit he’d completely lost track of the days in the month, Dean brushed it off. "Lemme guess, Cas was the criminal mastermind behind this?"  
    Caught, Castiel looked guiltily at his shoes.  
    "Open your presents and stop complaining," Meg pulled away from the wall, pointing at the pile. “I’m only here for the cake."  
    Setting his catch on the stairs, Dean gave the table an appraising look. It was a good spread, Sam and Castiel had outdone themselves and since he knew neither of them could bake, apparently so did Meg. No about to mention it, Dean shook his head, "So, surprise party, huh?"  
    Nodding, Castiel slid close and warm against his side said, "Happy birthday, Dean."

 

================================================

February 01st 1904

 

  
    January had come and gone and Dean wasn’t sure how he felt about another year gone, really. The fact of the matter was, he was aging and Castiel wasn't- wouldn't- so, what was he supposed to expect? Every year he was creeping closer to inevitable old age and he didn’t want to think about it. What would he look like, what would he have to offer when he was wrinkled and rheumy or worse, dependant? Nothing, and that's what scared him.  
    He knew Castiel wouldn’t leave and maybe that made it worse. Castiel would still look at him like nothing had changed and honestly, Dean wasn't sure he could handle that.  
    Peering into the bathroom mirror, he frowned at his reflection and counting the crow’s feet, he looked up and down, left and right. He was running out of his prime and in a few years, he'd be staring down the barrel of a life that wasn't designed to take him out young and ugly.  
    Running a hand through his hair, he noticed the way it lightened near his temples, the few strands of salt-and-pepper grey peeking through. He’d known going into it that what he and Cas had was subject to a one-sided eternity, or thought he had. Simply put, Castiel was going to live forever and Dean wasn't. There wasn’t a back door or a plan B, it just was. Castiel couldn’t grace him up and grant him a few extra centuries, causality could be bent in a lot of ways, but Dean knew that forever wasn't one of them. Briefly, he wondered if Castiel had considered the eventuality of saying goodbye because sooner or later, Dean was going to die. So, either Castiel kept going when he was gone or he threw in the towel but whichever it was, it was never going to end sunshine.  
    Feeling unusually morbid, Dean cranked the tap.  
    The trick was to ignore it, and splashing his face he braced against the sink. He had a few more years, _good_ years, before he had to really think about what-if, and the only reason it was at the forefront of his mind in the first place was because his birthday had scratched the surface. Old habits, really. Dean knew he was looking for the worst case scenario because the best, well, it was unfamiliar territory. Hunter’s had two ways to go- fast and bloody, or fading out slow, but he wasn’t a hunter anymore and maybe that meant stopping thinking like one.  
    Steeling himself and glancing up at his reflection, Dean froze. Then, he scrambled backwards, wheeled around fists at the ready. Heart-thudding in his chest he nearly jumped out of his skin when Sam knocked on the bathroom door to ask if he was finished.  
     “You done yet?”  
    "Yeah… Yeah, be out in a minute."  
    "You okay in there?"  
    "Yeah- fine, just... Gimme a minute."  
    Dean stared back into the mirror. He'd seen… Something. Himself, young and baby-faced with that cocky, world-conquering smirk he'd spent a lifetime perfecting. Green eyes and a smattering of freckles, he'd know that face anywhere. Adrenaline flooding his body Dean toweled off and maintaining some semblance of calm, sidestepped Sam on the way out of the bathroom.  
    Climbing the stairs to his room Dean knew there could be a thousand possible reasons for what he’d seen, and ignoring everything screaming at him to dig a little deeper, he didn’t. Instead, he did what any civilian would do. He buried it deep and pretended until it went away.

 

================================================

September 13th 1905

 

  
    It felt good to be out in the woods. Cas had pulled his old trench coat out from the back of the closet, wrapped it around his shoulders to guard against the inevitable rain. Twigs snapped under his shoes, and Dean teased him that he’d scare away all the deer.  
    “We’re not hunting deer, Dean.”  
    “Naw, books- but if they hear us coming? Vicious, man, I’m telling you.”  
    Dean was pretending to be unhappy running Sam’s errands, stalking through the woods, but a smile kept creeping in behind his sarcastic retorts. They’d heard there was an old hunter’s cabin a day’s hike from the nearest road, and Sam had sent them off just to get them out of the bunker and give him some peace and quiet. That and he needed new reading material, but regardless.  
    Thunder rumbled as the heavy black clouds slid against each other. Cas and Dean spoke simultaneously.  
    “It’s going to rain.”  
    “We should be almost there.”  
    When the sky opened, they were drenched in seconds and there was still no cabin in sight. Dean tugged his jacket off and tented it over his head as Cas followed suit, covering his hair with his coat collar and squinting through the tiny rivulets of water that ran over his eyes.  
    “Come on,” Dean said.  
    Cas followed him under the canopy of the nearest tree, water still dripping down but without as much force, caught by the branches and broad, flat leaves. Dean shrugged his coat back onto his shoulders and leaned against the trunk, tugging Cas toward him until they were pressed chest to chest.  
    Cas was wet, rumpled and frowning and Dean pushed his hair out of his face, scattering droplets and stroking his thumb against his temple. They’d spent the night under a tree like this last night when they’d tired of looking at the stars, wrapped in their military-issue sleeping bags and curled back to back in the dirt.  
    Frown disappearing with the slow, steady strokes of Dean’s hand through his hair, Cas let himself be pulled closer. Letting Dean wrap his arms tightly around his back, he buried his face against Dean’s throat as his hands slid against Dean’s chest. He could feel himself flush, every inch of him burning to be even closer, cock full and heavy where it pressed against his thigh. Bodies lined up hard cock against hard cock, their hips snapped together like they were magnetized for contact. Dean’s breath in his hair was like a benediction, and the rain fell around them like a tent- two lovers in the woods, no one but the birds to see them.  
    “Our first kiss was in the rain,” Castiel said.  
    And Dean kissed him again, with none of the guilt or urgency of the first. Just an easy closeness that came with the knowledge that Dean didn’t have to rush, could sink to his knees and take Cas into his mouth, shove him against the trunk of the tree, pants unfastened, and rut there until they couldn’t hold back any longer, or just kiss and kiss until the storm ran out and wait to take him on a pile of blankets when they finally figured out where they needed to be.  
    Castiel wasn’t as patient; he was focused with single-minded need on how the press of Dean’s body sent shivers through him, the twitch and leak of his cock against the fabric and the need to feel Dean’s skin against his own. He slid a hand in between their stomachs, and lower, breaking their kiss long enough to find the button on Dean’s jeans. Dean was wet, too, and Castiel felt the slick head of his cock against his searching palm, firm pressure that made Dean groan into his hair. Castiel wrapped his hand around the base and dragged his hand up slowly, waiting for what he knew was coming: Dean grabbing his shoulders, spinning him around, and slamming his back against the tree and kissing him until he thought he’d shatter from it.  
    But Dean had stopped responding and Castiel made a noise of complaint, low in his throat, pressing impossibly closer, but suddenly Dean’s body went rigid and he pulled immediately back. Dean was staring at something through the curtain of rain, squinting at the path that had gone gray and hazy with the storm.  
    Castiel started to ask what was wrong, but Dean clamped a hand over his mouth, palm pressed hotly against his lips and teeth.  
    “Shh.”  
    He strained to see what Dean was looking at, but there was nothing but fog. Dean pushed him away, stepping gingerly over gnarled roots and looking left and right. He gazed out into the forest for what felt like a very long time.  
    “Did you see-”  
    Dean broke off, shook his head as though to clear his vision.  
    It was absurd, really. He could have sworn he saw a boy running soundlessly through the rain, little red lights chasing at his heels. Almost like those ridiculous sneakers, the ones that lit up when you walked. Sammy had had a pair, had worn them everywhere after Dean had found them for him at the thrift store. The latest in Kindergarten fashion, until he outgrew them. But, there was no one there and those things hadn’t even been invented yet! He squinted through the rain a minute longer, but they were alone. Dean walked back over to where Castiel was waiting and pushed him against the trunk of the tree, rough, hands playing across his chest and lips easily finding a pulse point in his neck to worry with needy bites and sucks.  
    “Nevermind,” Dean said, whispering the words against Castiel’s skin. “Just thought I saw something.”  
    Castiel moaned, and Dean let go of the memory to focus on how warm Cas’ skin felt pressed against his own. In time, the storm passed and they headed out across the mud it left behind.

 

================================================

  
    Dean found his brother asleep at the kitchen table, surrounded by research and fingers curled loosely around an empty highball glass. Cas’ hand ghosted across the small of his back, leaning forward just enough to set the bag of books that they’d retrieved gently on the table. Dean smiled at him, still warm from the walk in the woods and the night they’d spent curled together under the stars. But he’d be damned if he was going to ignore Sammy’s falling asleep with a book for a pillow.  
    “You’d think he’d at least have had breakfast waiting for us,” Dean said.  
    Dean reached for the bag and upended it on the table, thud thud thud and a puff of dust in the quiet room. Sam jerked awake and looked around in alarm until his eyes settled on them both.  
    “Good morning, sunshine!”  
    “Dean,” Sam exclaimed. “You’re okay!”  
    “Yeah, yeah, Sammy. Cas and I subdued the reading material and dragged it back here. We didn’t even get a papercut. Hunters extraordinaire.”  
    “I thought -” Sam shook his head, trying to clear the haze of sleep.  
    Dean’s still-lingering afterglow left completely when he saw the frown on Sam’s face. What did Sam have to be worried about? His life was nothing but books and dancing around Meg and trying to make him and Cas eat their vegetables. Then, he noticed that the spread Sam had on the table were all on ghosts, and Dean knew for a fact that that section of his so-called Hunter Bible had been completed months ago.  
    “Sam, what’s wrong?” Cas had stepped forward to rest a hand on Sam’s shoulder, his own features contorted with the same worry that had settled heavy in Dean’s belly.  
    “You’re okay,” Sam repeated. “You’re both okay...”  
    “Yeah, Sammy, we’re good. Did something happen while we were gone?”  
    “Why are you reading about ghosts?” Cas asked. “There aren’t any ghosts here.”  
    “No, I know that. I thought I saw-” Sam broke off and squinted at Dean. “Never mind. It was nothing, apparently.”  
    “Sammy, spit it out.”  
    “I thought I saw you behind the hill! Not you, exactly. A teenage you. A transparent teenage you. It’s stupid; if you’d died and become a ghost you wouldn’t have been a teenager, but I just-”  
    “How much have you had to drink, Sam?” Cas asked.  
    Dean barely heard him because suddenly, he’d gone cold all over. Fear prickled at the base of his scalp, and brutal recognition: a pattern.  
    “Sam -”  
    But Sam interrupted before Dean could continue.  
    “I shot it with rock salt, and it was like nothing. You- I mean it- just _looked_ at me, but not like it could see me, and your- its- mouth was moving like it was having a conversation and then it just vanished.”  
    “You fucking shot me?”  
    “I thought you were a ghost!”  
    “Oh, that’s just great.”  
    “Like you wouldn’t do the same thing,” Sam said, throwing his hands up in aggravated protest.  
    “I didn’t!”  
    Cas and Sam both stared at him.  
    “In the woods. I thought I saw you, little-kid you. Remember those stupid sneakers you used to wear everywhere, the ones that Dad hated because they lit up and he said they’d have given you away in a heartbeat if we ever had to run away from something in the dark? I saw them on the path and then you were gone. And I sure as hell didn’t shoot at you.”  
    Sam and Dean continued to argue, sniping at each other and debating the circumstances under which it was acceptable for them to shoot at each other, but Castiel had stopped listening. Something was wrong. He could feel an itch at the back of his mind, a slight pressure, like the sensation of having forgotten the word you were looking for in the middle of speaking. What Dean had seen in the woods, what Sam had seen behind the hill, he knew they weren’t ghosts. But then... Castiel’s fingers clenched in frustration, unintentionally digging into Sam’s shoulder. There was something he was forgetting.  
    “Hey, Cas, come on. I’m not really going to shoot Dean. You don’t have to break my clavicle, man.”  
    “Of course. I’m sorry,” Cas said.

 

================================================

November 23rd 1905

 

  
    Meg was standing over the groaning shape of a man, knuckles bloody and a self-satisfied smile on her face. She'd gone to get Sam's letters and some new-recruit had tried to get smart. The bait and devil’s trap was the oldest trick in the book and if she’d learned anything from the Winchester boys, it was always look up and never trust a conveniently placed carpet.  
    "Y'know, I'm starting to think you don't know how this arrangement is supposed to work." Meg circled around to the man’s left. He was curled into himself, bruised ribs already throbbing. "Now, I came for something."  
    "Fuck-you."  
    "Wrong answer. Let's try again." Unfolding a piece of paper from her bag Meg set it on the ground with a pen, "I came for a letter. You give it to me, I walk. You look for me, you don’t. You look for the letterman, I track you down and you don’t want that. Now, lucky for you, the man doesn’t like when I get handsy- I get the big, sad eyes, the good samaritan speech... So, consider this your one-time phone-a-friend,” Meg kneeled down, knees crackling. “I suggest you start writing.”  
    A half an hour later, she was trudging back to base, mail bag in hand.  
    Most of Sam’s connections were happy for the help, suspect as hell sure, but not about to burn their bridges. Now and again she got the one trumped-up redneck who thought he understood the balance of power and that’s when things got a little tense. Still and to her credit, she hadn’t wrung anyone’s neck which showed remarkable strength of character, or at least that’s what she was sticking with.  
    Coming over the last hill before home, she cut past the footbridge and down back through the wood-thick trail. Then, she stopped dead in her tracks. Sunlight trickling through the leaves, Meg could see herself- or at least what she’d looked like once- through the foliage. Blonde, petite, the stolen body of some poor girl that had been good for a namesake. For a minute the mirage seemed to skip in and out of reality, blinking like an interdimensional skism before reappearing a scant three feet away.  
     “Spreading it wide for the Winchesters, tsk-tsk…” The duplicate came closer, eyes locked on Meg’s and lip curled. “Looks like someone has you on a short leash, now don’t they?”  
     “What are you?”  
     “What, don’t recognize me?” It said, coming closer as Meg backed up. “I’m you- the old you- the you that would have burned it all down for the fun of it. Remember the things we did, the throats we slit? Looks like mighty have fallen with you and me, haven’t they?”  
    The mirage came closer, close enough to touch and then…  
     _BANG!_  
     “Meg, you alright?” It was Sam, sawed-off at his side. “Was that… You?”  
    “What the hell is going on?”  
    “I don’t know.” He said, “But it keeps happening, and we need to find out why.”

 

================================================

May 2nd 1906

 

  
    Dean didn’t let himself think too hard about it, about any of it, but ignoring did nothing to stifle the creeping anxiety. The atmosphere in their makeshift little home was tense, and Dean wasn’t immune. He found himself waking up curled around Cas, fingers clenched against Cas’ arms as if he had been holding him in place all night. Cas said nothing, simply smoothed his hand over the red marks Dean left on his skin and made them disappear. If Dean was being honest with himself, it wasn’t just that he was getting clingy in his sleep. He took advantage of every excuse he had to touch Cas. The only time he felt at peace was when he was buried inside him, sweat and shared breath, sinking his teeth into Cas' shoulder to make him whine and arch under him. Or even better, when Cas was inside him and he was pinned to the mattress, relishing the weight of his lover on top of him, holding him in place and driving out any worry clinging to the corners of his mind.  
    Tonight he’d woken up at three in the morning, full of nameless dread and with the sweat of some nightmare cooling on his skin. He kicked the blankets from his legs, frustrated, and thrashed around in irritation like a child throwing a tantrum until the sheets were all thrown to the floor and he was spread eagle on the bed, letting the night air fan away some of the sweat still flush on his chest and neck. Eventually, he turned to look across the room at where Cas was sitting, straight backed in the chair Dean had made for him. Naturally, Cas was looking at him with an expression halfway between concerned and bemused.  
    “Are you too warm?” Cas asked.  
    Dean glanced around at the whirlwind of sheets and blankets strewn haphazardly out from the bed. He didn’t remember what he’d been dreaming, couldn’t quite place the worry eating under his skin lately, but he sure as hell didn’t want to talk about it in the middle of the night.  
    “Why don’t you come over here and find out?” Dean said, and if it was a cheesy, dumb line he didn’t care because Cas came over anyway, tugging his coat and tie off as he walked across the bedroom. Dean felt his stomach drop in anticipation as Cas hovered at the edge of the mattress, deft fingers undoing buttons until he could shrug out of his shirt.  
    “Did you really need to get dressed to sit and watch me sleep?” Dean asked.  
    Castiel let his pants pool around his ankles, stepping clear of them and climbing onto the bed in nothing but his boxers. He ignored Dean’s question in favor of sucking a bruise into the crease of his hip, the nearest part of Dean he could reach. He licked away the salty tang of sweat that the dream had left on his skin, tracing the bone with a curling tongue. Dean sighed and let one hand fall to the back of Castiel’s head, stroking his hair in encouragement as his mouth moved up to nip along his belly. Castiel could feel Dean’s breath speeding up, and he looked up the bed to see that Dean’s eyes had drifted shut, his head pressed back into the pillow and his neck a tense line arching toward the ceiling.  
    “Dean,” Castiel said.  
    Dean relaxed, the tension easing from his shoulders. He opened his eyes and found Castiel’s in the dark. Castiel swept his hands up along Dean’s chest, up from his hips, dragging his fingers heavy along his tense muscles. He dug his thumbs into Dean’s shoulders, kneading until he felt the knots there begin to ease.  
    Castiel’s body hovered just above Dean’s, the only point of contact between them was his fingers to Dean’s skin. He could feel the heat of Dean’s body across the inches that separated their chests, the incremental space between the inside of his knees and Dean’s sides where he straddled him on the bed.  
    “Cas,” Dean said.  
    His voice was a hushed whine, in counterpoint to the twitch of his hips arching toward Castiel’s. Castiel’s cock hung over Dean’s, heavy, and Dean didn’t have to arch much for the sensitive tip to brush against Dean’s stomach. Castiel hissed, resisting the temptation to grind down against Dean.  
    “Tell me what you want,” Castiel said instead.  
    Dean’s hands came up to wrap around Castiel’s arms, fingers curling and digging into his biceps. Dean wondered when Cas had learned to be such a tease. He loved and hated the game equally, kept wanting until he was desperate for it. Right now he wanted Cas to take him apart, overwhelm him, and he sure as hell didn’t want to have to ask nicely. But Cas' hands were braced on the headboard now and the only contact between them was Dean’s desperate grip on his arms. It wasn’t enough, not even close. Dean tried, futile, to pull Cas down on top of him and was rewarded with an amused look.  
    Yeah, it was going to be one of those nights.

 

================================================

September 17th 1906

 

  
    It had been four months since Sam had shot at Meg’s doppelganger.  
    Since then, he’d been buried in research and determined to find an answer while Dean pointedly ignored the whole thing. None of the facts seemed to line up, salt rounds wouldn’t touch them, or iron, but Sam had shot that ghost with a round from the future and poof, gone. Nothing special, not pure metal, just a regular shell. So, what kind of ghost or monster was afraid of the future? As confusing as it was, at least it was somewhere to start and the harder Sam looked for answers the angrier Dean became. The entirety of the bunker felt like a quiet war zone, but Meg was a step ahead.  
    Furtively, Castiel had avoided Sam's questions but from one professional liar to a good-intentioned one, Meg knew the tells. There was something Castiel wasn't letting on and if she had a private theory, she sure as hell didn’t want to be right. Either or and however it would turn out in the end, she’d been trying to corner Cas from the jump.  
    The problem was, he was good at avoiding conflict and whenever they might have a second alone, Castiel never seemed to be in the same place twice. Clearly he was hiding something and the only reason Sam and Dean hadn’t noticed, Meg thought, was because they were too busy pissing one another off. When she finally managed to come up behind him by sheer circumstance, she wasn’t going to let him slink out of giving her an answer.  
    Leaning against the doorframe in the kitchen and staring at the back of his head, Meg asked: "So, you going to tell me what's going on around here?"  
    "What are you talking ab-"  
    "Cut the crap." Meg stepped out of the shadows and into the glow of overhead light in the kitchen, "You might be able to pull one over of those two," Meg thumbed over her shoulder in the direction of the living room, "But give me a little more credit.”  
    Castiel sighed. He’d had a feeling he wasn’t going to keep Meg at arm’s length forever. She was intuitive, more so than Sam or Dean because she could feel the secondary plane. It had only been a matter of time. "I don't know what's going on, I suspect it's... It doesn't matter."  
    "It's what?" She pressed, and Castiel folded.  
    "We may be seeing echoes."  
    "Echoes of what?"  
    "Ourselves."  
    "Why?"  
    Castiel pursed his lips; because time was bending and he didn't know if that meant around or back, but things were changing and he could feel it. In the way the wind moved, the sound of the space between every air particle. Whatever it was, it was strong enough to breach the void. They were seeing themselves, glimpses, shadows and they shouldn't be! Once they had snapped out of their own timelines, they should have been living two separate existences, been reincarnated as separately fractured entities!  
    If they were appearing or as it might be, reappearing, it wasn't as ghosts but memories, they were reliving or being relived by their own present-pasts. It was a breach of congruence which didn't make sense, but until he could put his finger on it, it was proactive to assume the worst. But, with Dean's soft smile in the eyelight of his universe, Castiel couldn't bring himself to believe that all good things were temporary.  
    "I don't know why.” He said hoarsely, “Not yet, anyway."  
    "We're going back, aren't we?"  
    "That's not certain."  
    "But it's possible?"  
    Looking up at Meg with tired eyes, Castiel couldn’t hold her gaze for long. Looking pointedly at his feet he said, "Yes."  
    "You're not going to tell them, are you?"  
    "No,” He said. “Not yet.”

 

================================================

June 12th 1907

 

  
    Sam was asleep, folded over his typewriter and snoring softly.  
    Meg watched the rise and fall of his shoulders, the way his fingers twitched against the table in a dream. He was out like a light, so she didn’t hesitate to drink straight from the bottle, hell with the fancy glasses they’d bought. She had a half-baked list of places to go digging for clues about their ghost problem: shamans in the desert and witches in the Chicago bars, people who might have something Sam could use. A book to save generations of hunters, blah blah. As good a cause as any, especially when it came with whisky and gossip in the dark.  
    When she heard the crying, Meg nearly broke the bottle from jumping out of her chair. What the actual hell? There was no one here - certainly not a crying child. She set the bottle on the floor with a hollow thunk, squinting into the shadows.  
    “My knee hurts.”  
    There was a child in the corner of the room, no older than four or five, crouched on the floor by the bookshelves. The spines of the books were visible through him. He looked up at Meg with watery, transparent eyes. _Shit_.  
    “You’re supposed to kiss it. Dean always kisses it,” he said.  
    “Well then.”  
    There was a smartass retort, and Meg reached for it before she paused to look at the present-time, adult Sam asleep on the table. Then she crouched down next to the child who wasn’t there. This was worse than she’d thought; the end was so much closer than she’d let herself consider.  
    So she kissed his knee.

 

================================================

October 11th 1907

 

  
    The October sun was unseasonably cold and Castiel felt the prickle in his bones as the wind picked up around him. If he closed his eyes he could hear the crackle of trees-bows bending and the crunch-brown rustle of the leaves. Nature was never quiet but also, it was never loud enough to drown out the sound of reality concaving around him.  
    He had thought the hallucinations were over. The damage he had pulled from Sam into himself was nearly healed, or at least he had thought it was. So much time had passed. He felt clear, lucid, at peace. Some of it was the slowly refilling reservoir of his grace; some of it, he thought, was Dean’s grounding presence. But it had been years since the last time Castiel heard the ugly laughter of his fallen brother echo through his skull.  
    Happy years.  
    He had gone into town to pick up a few things from the store when he heard it. The laughter. It stumbled alongside the road until it wrapped around him, like the sound of children at play, like an embrace. He stopped dead when he heard it, an icy fear taking hold in his gut. This didn’t make sense. He could feel the pathways of his mind, feel that they were healed.  
    He wondered for a moment if he was really hearing it; if there was a child hidden by the side of the road, a small imp taking shelter in the growing stalks of summer corn. He felt no presence there, and then, in a rush, he felt two. Two echoes circled around him, sudden. He could hear them laugh, and then he could hear footsteps, running. Impossible! He saw no one.  
    Slowly, Castiel turned in a circle.  
    “Dean! Come on, Dean, give it back.”  
    It was as if the wind had decided to speak in the petulant whine of a little brother. The footsteps were little hops, exasperated laughter, a scuffle in the dust. The voice, although an octave higher, was Sam’s.  
    He should have known, should have _known!_ It was a litany that moved a thousand miles an hour through his thoughts. Couldn’t have kept it, didn’t deserve it, stupid, _stupid_ , arrogant angel. Of course it wasn’t sustainable. That was why you didn’t divert time this way, because it was pointless, because it didn’t last and it didn’t matter. Castiel had suspected for a while- too long, in fact. He had ignored it and pretended for the sake of some best-case scenario that didn’t exist. Side effects, he’d told himself. Mild irritations at best, ignorable, temporary things. But he could hear Lucifer’s echo in his head and worse, he knew the things the devil said were just the things he wouldn’t.  
     _You’re going to remember it all, little brother._  
    Yes, of course he would. Angels circumvented causality and in doing so, dealt with the consequences. Castiel didn’t know if he should be grateful or destroyed by the fact that he was going to remember everything. He was going to remember everything, but Dean wasn’t.  
    If he were seeing these memory fragments, they didn’t have much time left. He was at the center; he would be the last to catch glimpses of the reality, the natural flow that he had disrupted and that was running parallel just as surely as it was running in the future. All around him he could hear Sam and Dean as children, their footfalls like drumbeats, their laughter an accusation. This was the way it happened. They were running forward through time. They were going back.

 

================================================

January 01st 1908

 

  
    Sam was pacing in the kitchen, angry.  
    All signs pointed to something coming, something ugly, and Dean wasn’t listening! Years, that’s how long it had been happening. At first few and far between, easily forgettable, months between to let the sense of alarm ebb and fade, but now? They were seeing themselves everywhere: six years old, seven with those worn out chucks, eight, nine, ten. They had to prepare, they needed a plan, they needed to meet whatever it was head-on! Time ghosts, memories, what they were Sam still hadn’t figured out the riddle, but he couldn’t ignore his gut. Dean was going to have to listen, and if it was going to be a fight that was fine. Things didn’t just happen, not to them, not ever.  
    That wasn’t to say he didn’t understand, he did. They had built a life- a good life- and they had built it in the cracks between the walls of time but Sam knew, deep down, that everything had it’s price and maybe theirs was about to come due. Exasperated, he braced his hands on the table, leaning into Dean’s caustic bubble.  
    "Listen, we need to talk about this. We've all seen them, tell me this isn't a case."  
    "So what if it is? We're not hunters anymore! I'm not going back down that road!" Dean was angry, how many times had he said he didn’t want to talk about it? All of them, but Sam wasn’t getting the hint. Let it be someone else’s mess for a change, he’d quit and when he had, he’d done it with prejudice. "You know why, Sam? Because that road gets us killed!"  
    "Dean-"  
    "No!"  
     Still arguing, neither Sam or Dean were aware they were being watched. Standing guilty outside of the doorway ears perked, Castiel couldn’t bring himself to tell him the truth, couldn’t fight the glimmer of misplaced hope at the end of the tunnel. What is Sam found out? What if Dean dug deeper? He could only hope they wouldn’t, could only hang onto the lie if they didn’t follow the breadcrumbs.  
     He knew the outcome, was angelically certain, but the part of him that had been made a man for Dean rejected that certainty with an absolutely mortal desperation. There had to be a way to fix it and if there was, he would never have to tell Dean the truth. If he could fix it, he would never have to worry him with another what-if or another near-disaster, never break his faith in one more good thing.  
    If there was a way and he could find it, he knew the price he’d pay, and he was ready to pay it. He would clip his wings and fall from grace if he had to, be bone and dust and dirt if that was the cost. Anything not to admit he’d been wrong in doing what he’d done, that he’d ruined everything before it began. If he could find a way, if he could...  
    Anything, if he never had to say goodbye.  
    "Dammit, Sam! You were always the one who wanted a second chance and a normal life and all this crap," Dean swept an arm over Sam’s books and papers.  
    "And now you have it, so why are you trying to dig deeper?"  
    "Because we have to dig deeper!” Sam was trying not to raise his voice, but Dean didn’t understand! “When is it ever a coincidence with us? We can't just... Stick our heads in the sand and hope it goes away! It would and we’ll-"  
Behind Castiel, Meg sidled close. "They still fighting?"  
    "Yes."  
    "Do they know...?"  
    "No."  
    She was quiet for a minute, "I don't want to lose it, Clarence. I don't want this to be the end."  
    And Castiel couldn't say anything because with everything he had, he didn't either.

 

================================================

November 22 1908

 

 

  
    Castiel was walking, a sharp nip in the November air. It felt like he had scoured the universe, had tapped every resource he could think of, but he kept trying. Having rifled through his own endless memory for a hint at some angelic loophole and finding nothing, for weeks he had been sneaking away under pretense to visit shamans, witches, small and petty gods. Anything, everything to find the answer, but all to no avail. At present, he was talking the long way home to steel himself against being there.  
    Time was ticking, literally or figuratively, but he could still feel it around his neck like a noose. It seemed that Dean still wasn’t aware of what was happening and even if Sam was still searching, he was no closer to figuring it out. In some ways that made it easier for Castiel to pretend things were normal, in other ways it didn’t.  
    On some nights, it still felt normal. The sun was just right, the moon hung low, Dean seemed to swallow up worry in the world, and it was good again. Castiel tried to forget in those moments, wanted to enjoy what he could when he could. Dean would kiss him, touch him, slide into his body and he felt utterly destroyed. On those nights, I love you caught on the lump in his throat because if he said it, he couldn't hold back the dam. Castiel was falling quietly apart and every time he looked at Dean, he could see him crumble to dust.  
    If he had to estimate, they had a year or two before everything reset, if that. One year before Dean forgot the taste of his lips, the way it felt to wake up with Castiel’s patient, unsleeping fingers trailing through his hair. Before this home they had made was left a museum, or a mausoleum, of dusty dinner plates and a rusted typewriter where Sam’s work waited unfinished, never finished. They were going to lose everything, again, without even knowing it, and it was all his fault.  
    The laughter had stopped. The memory, the past or future or simultaneous play at an end. For now. Castiel wanted to go home, wanted to press Dean against the wall of their bedroom and try to give him something it would be impossible to forget. He wanted to tattoo his name across every inch of his skin, a thousand words that told the story of their love in mirror image so that Dean would see it and remember when it all fell apart. But he forced his feet to move forward. He had come to town for a reason; he wanted to get Dean a gift while it would still be welcome. He wanted to put off the moment when he had to tell their little family what he had done, what they had coming.  
    He knew what Dean would say, when he told them. If he told them.  
    Dean would swear up and down that he wasn’t going to forget this, wasn’t going to forget what they had. It would be a lie, and Castiel thought it would kill him to hear it. He knew he couldn’t bear to hear it. Sam would bury them in books, researching a way to stop the inevitable rupture. But Castiel knew there wasn’t one. They were all going back to the twenty-first century, to the exact moment he had pulled them from, and no one but Castiel was going to remember that they had ever left.

 

================================================

November 23rd 1908

 

  
     “What, are you telling me you don’t like it when I walk around naked after I shower?”  
    Dean was grinning, teasing, and Castiel felt sick. He was holding up a gray bathrobe, and Dean was running his hands over the fabric. Castiel could tell he was pleased.  
    “It bothers Sam when you go into the kitchen unclothed. Try it on.”  
    It could be the last gift he ever got Dean. The thought, like all unwelcome thoughts, pressed against the surface of his mind, refused to go away and let him enjoy the smirk Dean gave him as he pulled his tee shirt over his head. Dean undressed slowly and stood naked in front of him, the robe held in one hand.  
    “Sure you want me to put it on?”  
    Castiel stepped forward, took it from him. Dean turned and let him wrap the soft fabric around him like a cloak, slid his arms through the sleeves and stepped back until his shoulder blades dug into Castiel’s chest.  
    “It fits,” he said.  
    Castiel wrapped his arms around Dean from behind, buried his face against the back of his neck. He slid his hands down until he found the belt, tying a knot that held the robe closed around Dean. He pressed his lips against each vertebrae, bit the soft skin just behind his ear and made him hiss with pleasure. Dean tried to turn in his arms to face him but Castiel wouldn’t allow it, couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t tell Dean that their time was running out, and he just wanted to hold him like this a little longer.  
    “Cas,” Dean said his name with a whine, needy, his hands coming up to grasp Castiel’s wrists where they pressed against his chest. Cas' breath was hot against his shoulder, his body a line of heat against Dean’s back. “Come on, Cas. Let me kiss you.”  
    Cas finally relented, grip loosening enough that Dean could spin around and press their lips together, stepping backward and pulling Cas with him until he felt the back of his knees hit the mattress. Dean sat down, hands finding Cas' and tugging him closer until he was standing between his knees, bending over just enough that Dean could kiss him again. He was worried about something, but Dean was going to try to kiss it better first, make it all right with the movement of their bodies, before he’d try talking about it - old habits die hard.  
    “Dean,” Castiel breathed into his mouth, his fingers slipping against the vee of Dean’s chest exposed by the robe.  
    “Love my present, Cas,” Dean said. “Now take it off.”  
    Castiel shook his head, sank to his knees and pushed the soft fabric away from Dean’s thighs so that he could press kiss after kiss to the soft skin. Dean’s hands were in his hair, curling around the back of his head, little strokes and tugs encouraging him to move closer. Castiel nudged his way under the robe, letting the fabric fall over his head and muffle the sound of Dean’s beautiful, needy noises. A secret, soothing darkness: just shrouded shadow and the familiar scent of Dean’s body as Castiel licked his way across Dean’s balls and pressed kisses to the base of his cock. Dean’s hand on the back of his head, muted by the thin barrier of fabric, almost alone and separate as he took Dean’s cock all the way into his mouth, sucking and swallowing around it until he felt the blunt head edging up against his throat. He wanted to take him deeper, overwhelm him with pleasure until the moans echoing off their shared bedroom were enough to convince him that it couldn’t end, not ever, that Dean would never be able to forget this, laws of the universe be damned. But the angle was wrong, so he just sucked and licked and felt Dean’s thighs tremble under his hands until he came, panting his name.  
    Castiel was careful not to spill a drop, swallowing until he felt the dry twitch of Dean’s softening cock against the roof of his mouth, and then he pulled back and ran his tongue in little kitten licks across the head until he felt satisfied that Dean was clean and spent. Above him was a litany of protests, telling him it was too much, too good, but Castiel ignored him and just let his cheek rest against Dean’s thigh, safe and out of sight, at peace.  
    It took a little time before Dean was able to coax him out and into his lap, to press their foreheads together and give him gentle, grateful kisses and whisper praise across his skin. When they lay down together, Cas was relaxed and Dean could almost convince himself that whatever had been bothering him for weeks had finally been worked out.

 

================================================

May 19th 1909

 

  
    Meg was sitting outside on the lawn staring at nothing. She'd more or less come to terms with the short stick, things were going to change even if Castiel's virulent optimism was banking on a last-minute miracle. When did those happen? Yeah, never. So, fuck time. Fuck causality and fuck the whole goddamn plan. If she was going to glory or to dust, it was going to be with a smile on her face and a whisky in her hand.  
    Sipping her drink thoughtfully, Meg didn't look up when Sam's shadow slid over hers or when he sat down, near enough that their knees brushed. Simmer, salt to taste, and maybe she was just tired of waiting. Leaning back elbow in the grass she asked, "I’ve been thinking, you ever wonder if all the shit you two got saddled with was just because you were the unlucky sap that picked the hero card?”  
    "Hah," Sam shook his head, self-deprecating laugh falling heavy on the evening. "Yeah. Like, my whole life." He paused, “But...”  
    "Think you ever had a choice?"  
    "Well, I was kinda made to be the bad guy if you think about it." Sam frowned, "I don't know." He stared out at the setting sun, "I think that good is just... Being that way. You can be, or not, but it's doing it even when it would be easier not to. Trying, I guess?"  
    "Hmm." There was another silence and then, "So, guess I traded in being a badass for a pretty shit deal, huh?"  
    Sam smiled at the ground, "Yeah, guess you did."  
    As they sat, Meg wondered what it would have been like, batting for the A-team all along. Loathed to admit it, sure, but those two, Sam, Dean- hell, Cas when he wasn't clanging around in his own melon? There was a reason they always won. It wasn't because they were born to do it or made to do it, but because they took the master plan and said screw that, suit up, game on. Meg might have found herself domesticated by circumstance but there was still a renegade in her that could appreciate cooking with anarchy.  
    More than likely Meg knew she was going to snap back into a time where she was the enemy, but when shit hit the proverbial fan, she’d sussed out the side of the fence worth standing on. Forget all the romanticism and the save-the-day bullshit, there was a bigger picture. If Castiel dropped the ball, she still had a set of brass balls and a list of names. Maybe, in a sense, her sudden calm was closure. Meg had been forged in hell to raise a little of her own, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t pick what kind.  
    “You figured out what’s going on, yet?” She asked.  
    “No.”  
    “Didn’t think so.”  
    “Hmm.”  
    After a few minutes Sam pushed off from the lawn, knees popping. "It's starting to get cold," He made to help her up, "Should probably go inside."  
    Yeah, they probably should.  
    "Y’know,” She looked up at Sam’s proffered hand, tongue in cheek smile a little too classic for them both. “I don’t think I’ve got a whole lot of good in me, Sammy. But,” Her fingers slid over the thick of his wrist, resting on the vein. “Bet I could use some.”

 

================================================

August 05th 1909

 

  
    Dean was laying flat on his back, the gramophone blaring something that passed for music. He heard Sam come in, heard the shuffle-step that meant his brother was probably carrying a tower of books to stuff their already overflowing shelves. He spoke without looking up, his arm draped heavy across his eyes.  
    “You couldn’t have talked her into bringing one Zeppelin album with that haul? Twentieth century music blows.”  
    Sam stared down at his brother for a long moment before he dropped the books onto the table.  
    “Where’s Cas?”  
    “Avoiding me.”  
    “Is that why you’re acting like a sixteen year old?”  
    Dean rolled over, squinting up at Sam for a minute before slumping back on the floor.  
    “I had way better game when I was sixteen. Maybe he thinks I’m boring in bed.”  
    “Please, please stop talking.”  
    “I mean, I thought the spanking paddle was a creative idea. These Victorians -”  
    “Yes, I remember the porn you got me for Christmas. Can we please not talk about your sex life?”  
    “Would you rather we talk about yours?”  
    Sam felt like some of the air had gone out of the room, his breath catching in his throat.  
    “It’s cool, Sammy. But you seriously need to have her get me some Zep.”  
    Sam tried not to think too hard about what a huge deal it was that Dean had just said that. He was actually trying really, really hard not to overthink the whole situation. He cleared his throat, continued as if the pause hadn’t already lasted too long.  
    “It won’t play on that, anyway.”  
    “Then she could get me a walkman.”  
    Sam gave a genuine laugh.  
    “Seriously? You are. You’re sixteen.”  
    “Shut up,” Dean said.  
    “Proving my point.”  
    Dean got up, turned the gramophone off and sat at the table next to Sam. He pulled a book from the top of the pile and rifled through it, not reading or even looking, really.  
    “I could use some advice, man,” Dean said.  
    Sam thought about continuing to banter, a comeback about how Dean’s music taste sure could use some advice. But they were older, now. They’d changed so much in the years they’d spent here. And he could do better.  
    “Have you talked to him?”  
    “I tried. He won’t talk about it.”  
    “Did something happen? Or do you think it’s about the ghosts?”  
    Dean put the book down, shoved it back and forth across the table with a small, nervous movement. He had been avoiding the answer to that question with all the denial he could muster.  
    “Yeah,” he said. “I think there’s something he’s not telling us.”  
    Sam punched Dean’s shoulder once, lightly, as he stood to go.  
    “Give him some time, Dean. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”  
    Somehow, it was enough to make Dean feel better. He took a deep breath, and followed Sam into the kitchen to start making dinner. When Cas joined them, as the smell of the meatloaf in the oven pervaded the entire bunker, Dean snaked his arm around Cas’s hips with an easy intimacy.  
    “Missed you,” he said, voice low and close. Cas moved into his touch and pressed his lips against Dean’s shoulder, almost apologetic, before stepping away to set the table.  
    He could trust Cas enough not to push. Cas would tell him when he was ready.

 

================================================

Septmember 14th 1909

 

  
    Sam fell asleep in the kitchen without realizing it.  
    He’d been pouring over his research, but it was starting to feel like there was no point. He hadn't found anything useful, probably wouldn't, and he had a backlog of Hunter's waiting for Intel that he’d put off for weeks and enough was enough. He couldn't keep wasting time, maybe Dean was right. Maybe the ghosts really were just side-effects of time-travel. Castiel had pulled a pretty big trick getting them back as far as he did; maybe that was just what happened. Benign shadows of who they used to be, annoying but harmless. An hour later, he startled awake to Meg’s face peering down at his.  
    Snorting, Meg said: “Good nap?”  
    “Until you scared me to death, yeah.” Sam winced and then rubbed his temple, “What time is it?”  
    “Six.”  
    “Ugh.”  
    “So...” Meg leaned back, crossing her arms. “Come up with any new theories, or we still sitting on bupkis? The Tatum file is probably ready if you want me to go and-”  
    “No. I don’t know. I’m honestly starting to think it’s nothing- I mean, I know we can only see our own memories, but, all of us can see one another’s too. That should mean it's connected to all of us, maybe to how we got here."  
    "Yeah...?" She said nonchalantly. Castiel had asked her to keep quiet, but whatever Sam found out on his own? Not her problem. She was tired of tiptoeing the issue, being stranded adrift in the what-if. Misery loves company and what she really wanted was someone to enjoy it with. “No theories at all, huh?”  
    "No,” Sam continued. “Iron does nothing. Neither does salt. But, anything from the future..."  
    “Whoosh, gone.”  
    "Exactly! Look, I've gone over everything and it just doesn't make sense! Once we deviated from the timeline, we kept moving forward. So, this is technically the future to our past, but weapons from this timeline? They don’t work. If these things are connected to us, to our futures...”  
    And then, the sudden impact of dread.  
    "Unless... Unless we never really went forward at all.” Sam’s heart sank heavy in his chest, "The time bubble, it's not around us, is it?" He raked his fingers through his hair, "It's around the timeline! And when that timeline ends..." Ah, and there it was, bang on the money. "We’re going back."  
    Meg looked at him softly, "Yeah, big boy. We’re going back.”  
    Dick Roman, leviathans. Those were all things Sam had left behind. Just another in a long line of nightmares narrowly escaped and if they went back, that war was theirs all over again. Sure, their delineated doubles had won, but would they? Circumstance, causality. If they snapped back, zigged instead of zagged...  
    “We’re going to die.”  
    “Maybe.” She shrugged. "But," She gestured at Sam's papers. “At least one of us won’t be forgotten.”

 

================================================

January 31st 1910

 

  
    Knowing was harder than he expected. Sam wasn't sure what to say or what to do. Every instinct screamed tell Dean, tell him because he deserves to know. More than that, he didn't want to lose his trust but on the other hand, Sam knew he was happy. His expression was softer, his steps lighter, the way he was with Cas? It was the life Dean deserved even if he’d had his reservations, Sam knew he would rather choke on his sense of right and wrong than tell Dean that their lives were suddenly temporary.  
    Then, there was Castiel.  
    Dean had talked it out with him, thought he was acting strange. Hunter's instinct said maybe Cas knew something but better judgment kicked in. He wouldn't do that to them, not after everything else and that left Sam with the same advice he'd given Dean: Just talk to him.  
    Two weeks later, it all came to a head.  
    "What the hell do you mean, there might be a problem? You knew what was going on?"  
    Castiel looked ashamedly at the floor. "Yes."  
    "And you figured when would be a great time to tell me, never?"  
    "I was trying to find a solution before I-"  
    "We could have done that together!"  
    Dean was furious! He thought they were gone with greater good bullshit, and then Cas had gone and lied to him again. The only reason he'd found out in the first place was he'd made some off-handed comment about the ghost phenomenon and looked up in time to recognize Castiel's guilty side-glance for what it was.  
    Hovering behind Dean in the living room was Sam looking pale-faced and miserable. He knew he should step in, if only to keep things from escalating, but truth be told he wasn't happy either. He'd trusted that Castiel wouldn't do exactly what he'd done which was lie, and worse was the way Meg watched the whole drama unfold from the corner of the room like she wasn't even remotely surprised.  
    "Dean, can you stop shouting for a minute?"  
    "Let me guess, you knew about this too, didn't you?"  
    "I-" Sam could have lied, but he didn't. "Yeah, I did."  
And that was the last straw. Dean would have expected that kind of thing from Meg, Cas even though he didn't want to admit it, but Sam? After everything, after all the times they'd been brung down in flames and learned their lesson, and Sam had lied to him again.  
    "Why?" He said venomously.  
    "Because you were happy, Dean." Sam said, looking at the way Castiel's face crumpled in Dean's shadow. "I didn't want to be the person that had to take that away from you."

 

================================================

March 19th 1911

 

  
    Dean had to hand it to Cas- he hadn’t been hovering. Dean needed space to process and Cas gave it to him. When Dean would go and find Cas, after an hour or two of brooding, and rapid-fire question him about this or that solution to their impending end, Cas would just shake his head sadly. “I already tried that, Dean,” he would say, or, “It isn’t possible.” This exchange went on for a few days, no other words between them, Cas planted firmly in his chair each night as Dean lay in bed rigid and unsleeping.  
    It took a few days before Dean asked Cas the question he really wanted an answer to. Cas was sitting behind the hill, face upturned to the warmth of the spring sunlight. It was the first really warm day they’d had, tee shirt weather, and Dean wasn’t surprised to find Cas stretched out in the grass.  
    He stood on the hill a few feet below Cas, the toes of his boots scraping the dirt as he balanced on the incline.  
    “Why didn’t you talk to me about this?”  
    Cas sat up, legs stretched out in front of him and palms braced against the earth. Dean slid his hands into his pockets, fidgeted.  
    “I thought we talked about stuff now,” Dean said.  
    “I’m sorry,” Cas said. “I just -”  
    “Just what, Cas? Thought you could fix it?”  
    “- didn’t want it to be true. Dean, I’m going to remember everything. All of this. And you -”  
    Dean stepped closer, crouched down so he could reach for Cas’s hand. This was stupid. Cas was upset, he was upset, and they were upset about the same thing. In a way, it was Cas’s fault, but in so many more ways it wasn’t. They weren’t going to fall into their old familiar pattern; they weren’t the same people anymore.  
    “It’ll be okay,” Dean said.  
    “No,” Cas said. “It won’t.”  
    “Then let’s be okay now. Seriously, Cas. If this is the end let’s not waste time fighting. I’m right here. Come on.”  
    Cas looked up at him, unconvinced. His hand tightened in Dean’s, clutching against his fingers.  
    Dean set about convincing him, convincing him they were okay, that they still had this, even if it was going to be over. Of course he’d known it couldn’t last. It was enough that he’d been able to believe differently for a little while, anyway. He pressed his lips to Cas’s in slow, sure kisses, their mouths sliding against each other in easy familiarity. Just a little bit more of this. Just a little bit more, and then it could be enough. He could be satisfied with it. He could face goodbye. Just a little more.  
    Just a little more.

 

================================================

August 31st 1910

 

  
    Sam considered himself lucky.  
    It wasn’t easy, but he’d come to terms. Ten years, a decade. A good, simple life with his brother, with Cas and Meg. He didn’t want it to end, of course he didn’t, but it was going to and that meant he had to be ready. Meg had said that he’d a leave a legacy and more than ever, he wanted to make sure he did. He had thousands of books, hundreds of road logs, theories, evidence. Everything he had done, if he was going to disappear only to reappear back in a world where it was god-eat-dog, he’d make sure that someone benefitted from the kind of life he had lived- would live- the kind of man he was.  
     Dean was still angry but then, that was a given.  
    For a few minutes, Sam stared at his typewriter before ultimately moving it to the side. What he was about to do was personal, and that meant hand and ink. For an hour there was no sound but the delicate scritch across the surface of his paper. When he was done, he would give the letter to Meg and she would take it forward in time. Two years, he’d decided, just to be sure their timelines wouldn't overlap. It was blind faith, but something inside him burned to preserve the only legacy he would ever have. With purpose, he carefully scrawled Larold Ganom on the envelope front, hand-glued the seam and folded it shut. Larold had been one of Sam's first hunters, his field research was impeccable, his writing precise. Before he'd become a hunter, he'd been a scholar.  
    But, Sam hadn't picked him for this reason.  
    Causality has a funny way of working out the kinks and in a hundred years’ time, give or take, Sam would be looking at the grizzled face of Larry Ganem junior; the last surviving keeper of his archive. But, as Sam carefully lit his desk lamp, he had no way of knowing. Change the circumstance, change the faces and the means, but there is a script to be followed. The Archives were meant to exist, and Castiel had altered the puzzle but not the piece. If it hadn’t been Sam, it would have been someone.  
    For a minute, Sam stared down at the envelope in his hands. Inside was also a key, the only key. He wondered if he’d ever stumble on it again, if he’d ever touch the bent spines of his books, if he’d ever... For a split second, he considered sending it to himself, instead. Just locking everything up tight, but he knew that wouldn’t work. Sooner or later someone was going wonder what was inside the bunker, break in, destroy everything. The only way to protect it was to entrust it to someone for safe-keeping and that was what he was doing. Time was going to move forward and he was going to move with it, but everything he'd done- everything he'd worked on- it would have a place. Sam might go back, fight the good fight, probably die, but he was never going to be _gone._  
    It was comforting, knowing that.

 

================================================

June 17th 1911

 

  
    Time magic.  
    It was the last thing Sam could add to the archive. Meg was hesitant, and Sam understood why. In their brief history, he had a known tendency to do stupid things because that's what heroes do. But, this time he wasn't looking to fix things and maybe she understood the way he worded it, or gave him the benefit of the doubt... But whatever or why, he was finished when that final volume shut.  
    In the quiet, Meg's knee touched Sam's and she thought about where she'd come from, what she was. Sappy and sentimental sure, but maybe she got to have that now and again. Whatever she'd been before hell, if she'd ever been anything else, maybe those remnants were what Castiel had inadvertently given back her when he has rearranged the universe. Sam’s knuckles brushing hers, she didn’t mind that she felt like someone new.  
    "Take that letter tomorrow?" She asked and softly, Sam said: "Yeah."

 

================================================

June 19th 1911

  
    The hushed anxiety of waiting - Dean couldn’t stand it. He sat on the edge of the bed, boots planted firmly on the floor and elbows braced against his knees, hands doing the work of holding his head up. He wasn’t going to face the dissolution of reality with anything less than perfect courage, goddammit, he was going to be strong for Cas right now and leave him with one perfect, unsullied memory. He was not going to shout, or swear, or beg Cas to find a way out when they both knew there wasn’t one. He wasn’t going to blame him, not for this. Ten years, and it was going to be taken from him just like that.  
    But Cas was going to remember. Cas was going to remember, and they’d talked it to death, talked for days, Sam spinning out metaphysical explanations, Meg cracking sarcastic jokes to lighten the mood, and Cas emanating pure despair and a guilt that Dean hadn’t seen on him in years. There was no way out, and every time Dean promised he’d remember, that he couldn’t possibly forget, Cas would sink lower into himself. He’d tried to convince him, teasing that he’d been seduced once and could be seduced again, but Cas would just shake his head as if such impossible luck could never be repeated. Dean believed it too, a little, that if he went back to the ungrateful bastard he’d been when this all started Cas wouldn’t tolerate it twice. Cas was sane now, more or less. He wouldn’t subject himself to the early phase of their relationship a second time, and instead simply abandon Dean for the immaturity he’d be mired in the second they snapped back to the cabin in Whitefish.  
    They were in their bedroom, and Cas was sitting in the chair Dean had made for him with his own hands. When Dean woke up, blinking sleep from his eyes and squinting in the morning light, he would look across the room and see Cas sitting there more often than not. But when he went to sleep tonight, he wasn’t going to wake up here. He was never going to wake up in this bed again.  
    In a way, it was like dying. Cas thought of it that way, he looked at Dean as if he were a condemned man, and he visibly braced himself for grief. But in a lot of ways, it was worse. In a secret, shameful part of himself Dean wished Cas had been able to keep the truth from him. Despite all his insistence on honesty, despite how he had pressed, pressed, pressed for Cas to tell him everything, he wished his angel had lied. That he could go to sleep tonight and have everything taken from him while he was unconscious, unaware. It was a cowardly wish, and he hated himself for it. He was going to be strong, and he was going to help Cas get through this. He wasn’t the one who was going to be hurt; he wasn’t even going to know- _fuck!_ \- he wasn’t even going to remember.  
    He couldn’t stand to look at Cas crumpled in on himself in that damn chair. Knowing him - and he did know him, knew him intimately, knew exactly what he felt from a quirk of the lips or the way his hand twisted in his when they reached for each other - Dean knew Cas was probably planning on sitting in silent vigil clear across the room, refusing to infringe on Dean’s space with what he saw as his failure. But this was their last night together, probably ever, and even if it was going to be erased from his mind Dean wasn’t going to waste it. He wasn’t going to sit here while his angel punished himself.  
    “Cas, come here.”  
    “Dean - “  
    “Cas, I’m not going to forget. I’m not.”  
    It was the wrong thing to say, it kept being the wrong thing to say, but Dean couldn’t stop the words from coming out. Cas hunched forward, eyes dull. Dean inhaled, shaky, tried again.  
    “Whatever, so what if I do?” False bravado, tremor. “It’s not like I wasn’t in love with you, you know - there. Just buy me a pie and some porn, and once you get me into bed and do that thing with your tongue you’ll have me hooked again for life.“  
    “Dean.”  
    “Goddammit, stop saying my name like it’s a whole sentence. We are not going to sit here and talk about our feelings. What, do you want the last night on earth speech? Or are we past that? Can you just come over here and let me touch you until - “  
    Dean’s voice broke. Until everything ended. Until he lost the best memories he’d ever made. Until the bunker that he’d improved painstakingly in a labor of years and slow-calloused hands was left empty, and the man he’d grown into in the process was lost to him, and the angel he’d convinced, somehow, to love him and to allow himself to be loved by was left devastated. And he wouldn’t be able to take care of him, wouldn’t even know that he needed it.  
    Cas heaved himself out of the chair. He walked the length of the room until he was close enough that Dean could reach out and wrap his arms around him, pull him by the waist until he stood between his knees and Dean could bury his face in the soft fabric of Cas' shirt.  
    Castiel’s hands found his shoulders; his grip was too-tight and desperate. Any bruises he left would be erased, like everything else but Dean was warm and solid under his palms so he buried his face in Dean’s hair to memorize how he smelled, trying not to wonder if he would ever be this close to him again. Every promise Dean made was like a stab in the gut - futile words, a reminder of what he’d done. The beautiful thing he’d made and doomed.  
    “Stop, Cas.” Dean said like he already knew. “It’s not your fault.”  
    He lay back on the bed, pulling Castiel with him. They lay on their sides, curled towards each other, their foreheads pressed together. Dean’s hand moved in long, sure strokes up and down Castiel’s arm. When he kissed him it was deliberate and thorough, and they both kept their eyes open.

 

================================================

  
    It took longer than Castiel had expected. Dean had struggled to stay awake, limbs tangled up in his, slow, sleepy blinks as his gaze lingered on the detritus of their ten years of making a home. Castiel watched his eyes linger on his chair, the one Dean had made for him so he had somewhere to sit while Dean got his “four hours” - four hours that had crept closer to eight as the years went by, nine on Sundays.  
    Castiel thought about the fact that he would never sit there again, soothed by the steady rise and fall of Dean’s chest, weighing the option of stepping into his dreams or merely appreciating what relative peace did for his lover’s features. But he would not leave Dean, would not allow so much as an inch of space between them, until the easy closeness was ripped from him.  
    Eventually, Dean succumbed to sleep, exhausted, his head cradled on Castiel’s chest. Castiel could feel time folding in on them: a pretty cage about to shatter, a negation. He closed his eyes against it like a child, for all his billion years, curled his grace and his vessel’s body around Dean, buried his face in Dean’s hair. Time inched; it crawled. He could feel it lapping around his fingers and toes like a tide going out. Dean frowned in his sleep and his hands tangled convulsively in the blankets as if he could feel it, too.  
    Castiel had expected a crash, but it turned out to be so much worse. He could feel Sam and Meg being pulled from him; he watched Dean flicker in and out, a slow fade toward the present.  
    Before it was over, Dean opened his eyes. There was recognition, arms tightening around Castiel’s waist - and then there wasn’t. And then Castiel was alone in a room suddenly covered by dust. Castiel allowed himself a heartbeat to feel pain before he manifested a brightly colored mat, snapped himself into asylum white, and winged his broken heart back to Dean’s side...  
    And, god, Castiel would do anything not to remember.

 

================================================

  
    Calm, the center eye of the storm.  
    It seemed like whatever he was doing, Dean was looking for something. Something he should have- or had, maybe remembered. He had tried to explain what it felt like, stumbled through the words like they could give meaning to something as migrant as loss. How could he explain that he felt like he wasn’t who he was supposed to be, like he was living someone else’s life? He couldn’t, but there were scattered clues he couldn’t fit together right, but couldn’t ignore.  
    Now, he was staring at the ceiling of his bedroom wishing he could sleep.  
    A secret bunker, a place to rest his head after a lifetime on the road. He had come into it as a title, Men of Letters like it meant something, and he should have settled in the way Sam had, but didn’t. Walking through the front door had felt like nothing he had ever felt, peeled apart by reality, slammed by an invisible blow to his chest that sent him reeling. It was a split-second whitewash of déjà vu so intense it stopped him in his tracks and as quickly as the feeling came, it passed.  
    Or maybe, he just ignored it.  
    After that and for the most part, he was fine. But every now and again, something would catch his eye, tug on some mental thread that never led to why. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there were things he did that he did just to do them; hauled a chair from the kitchen to his bedroom, liberated a typewriter he found in the study. Sam didn’t understand why he wanted things he’d never use but then again, neither did Dean. It just felt like there was a place for those things, that they were missing.  
    Sighing, Dean pulled the covers up, then down, fidgeted and looked at the door, the chair in the corner. His bed too close to the wall, his desk should be a foot to the left. Maybe he was going crazy in slow motion, didn’t know how to put on the breaks or explain why the phantom weight of someone curled against his side made him ache. Hell and back was a passing phrase, purgatory? He’d been there, done that. But, he still had no idea why he had everything he could possibly want and it wasn't good enough. Soft bed, roof over his head but when he wasn’t kept busy, when he let his mind wander, it always wandered to that same, warm place.  
    Feeling asleep as a shadow fell across his face, Dean didn’t feel a hand rest on his shoulder, run through his hair. He didn’t feel the way he was tenderly regarded, a ghost-touch that lingered a second more than it should. He didn’t stir when the chair near his bed creaked, or when a soft voice said: Goodnight, Dean.  
    Six hours before dawn but between them, all the time in the world.


End file.
